LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Ciiap.'HB Copyright No.A_l£> 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



In The Time of Paul 



In the Time of Paul 



How Christianity Entered 
Into and Modified Life in 
the Roman Empire : : : 

s 
BY / 

Rev. Edward G. Selden, D.D 

Pastor of the Madison Avenue Reformed Church, 
Albany, N. Y. 



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Chicago New York Toronto 

Fleming H. Re veil Company 



Publishers of Evangelical Literature 



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69859 



LiOi-Ki-y of Oun^rwt 

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NOV 2 1900 

SECOND COPY. 
OR0LH DIVISION, 

NOV 20 I you 



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Copyright 1900 
By Fleming H. Revell Company 



INTRODUCTION. 

T^HIS little book attempts to set forth some 
* of the more significant facts pertaining 
to the Gentile world into which the Apostle 
Paul carried the Gospel of Christ. It is not 
possible to make an exact division of the com- 
posite life of his times and to trace out in all 
their detail the political, social, moral, relig- 
ious, and intellectual phases of the old civili- 
zation which it was the task of Christianity to 
recast. The various departments of influence 
overlap and intermingle; yet in order to set 
forth the complex conditions with which the 
new religion had to deal, and out of which it 
achieved unparalleled results, it seems best to 
present a series of pictures, outlining in swift 
succession the special aspects of the world 
into which Christianity was forcing its tri- 
umphant way. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Chap. Page 

I. Paul and His Times 13 

II. The Task Assumed by Christianity . 26 

III. The Political Structure of the Roman 

World 43 

IV. The Social Life of the First Century . 61 

V. The Religious Condition of the Age . 81 

VI. The Moral Standards of the Period . 100 

VII. The Intellectual Tendencies of the 

Time 122 

VIII. The Inevitable Conflict and Victory . 143 



chapter i. 
St. Paul and His Times 

'"THE Apostle Paul is the representative man 
* of the first century. In him are embodied 
the moral qualities and the missionary motives 
by which Christianity conquered the world. 
It would be unjust to ignore the de- 
votion and service of his fellow laborers. 
John was of even finer mold. Peter was 
equally earnest, Barnabas as conscien- 
tious; but none embodied so much of power 
and grace, so much of promise and proph- 
ecy. In no other was manifested such 
persistent zeal and such adroit application of 
the forces at command. l < He was one of the 
creative geniuses whose policy marks out a 
line on which history has to move for genera- 
tions afterward." Not only is this our con- 
clusion upon reviewing the events of the first 
century, but it must even have been patent to 
his own clear judgment. By preaching, and 
by the organization of gathering forces, he felt 
himself under constraint at any cost to insure 
the establishment of Christianity in the Empire. 

13 



In The Time of Paul 

In answering the summons to leadership in 
the new movement he rose to the sublimest 
heights of thought and purpose. His very- 
consciousness was transfused by the glory of 
the undertaking. Partly by virtue of his own 
energy and partly by force of circumstance he 
was pushed to the front. He was content to 
build on no man's foundation, to preach no 
gospel save that which had been revealed to 
him, to determine his action by no man's ad- 
vice, to gauge his fervor by no other man's 
devotion. He was absorbed in his apostolic 
mission. Hence came services second in 
moral quality and effectiveness to those of no 
other man since time began. Moses was a 
leader and lawgiver whose labors for his own 
nation cannot be overrated; David laid the 
foundations of a kingdom, and gathered the 
soul of all lands and ages into the music of his 
psalms; Cyrus appeared as the providential 
deliverer of a people who could not fulfil their 
destiny in captivity and exile; Alexander has 
been ranked by a modern historian next to 
the Man of Galilee as a promoter of civiliza- 
tion ; to the generalship and statesmanship of 
Caesar is to be attributed the territorial ex- 
pansion of the Eoman Empire; yet the work 
of none of these was so absolutely and incon- 
trovertibly vital to the higher interests of 

14 



St. Paul and His Times 

mankind as was that of the Apostle to the 
Gentiles. He wrought largely in the Great 
Western Empire, through which ail that was 
best in the earlier civilizations was transmitted 
to modern nations. His labors entered into 
the persistent and progressive life of the ages. 
One secret of Paul's remarkable success is 
found in the nearly perfect combination of 
hereditary qualities and prerogatives which 
he possessed. In him mingled two streams of 
tendency which flowed out of the Jewish and 
Roman worlds. On one side were ancestry 
and training, on the other the proud conscious- 
ness and the political privileges of a citizen of 
the Empire. His family had very likely resided 
in Tarsus long enough to have become iden- 
tified with its social life and endowed with all 
the rights and sentiments of citizenship. The 
Seleucid kings in founding the place had shown 
a preference for Jewish colonists, so that poli- 
tical favors may have been granted, a genera- 
tion or two before Paul's time, for distin- 
guished services. While, therefore, the train- 
ing of youth and the later education of young 
manhoood in the school of Gamaliel had given 
him intimate acquaintance with the literature, 
laws and traditions of his people, so that 
Jewish feelings were in him peculiarly intense, 
yet having been born so far from Jerusa- 

15 



In The Time of Paul 

lem, in a Roman colony and in the midst 
of Roman influences, he must have had a 
broader acquaintance with the world and a more 
catholic sympathy with man than was possible 
to the other apostles. He appreciated the glory 
of Jewish tradition and its narrowness, the 
corruption of Rome and its actual power. In 
a practical way also he used the twofold 
advantage of Hebrew birth and Roman citizen- 
ship. In every city he went, first of all, where 
a Gentile would not have been admitted, 
namely, into a synagogue. He was at home 
in the simple customs of worship and speech 
of his people. He could begin every appeal 
to them on the ground of common faith 
and hope in the God of Israel, and in his 
teaching could move along the lines of 
their Messianic promises to the actual life and 
teachings of Jesus. To be sure, he met with 
bitter opposition and cruel treatment, and yet 
in every town through him as a Heaven-sent 
ambassador, Christ came to some of His own 
who were ready to receive Him. This accounts 
for speedy success in Asia Minor and in Ma- 
cedonia, in Corinth and in Rome. The Jewish 
people were already widely scattered. Jose- 
phus mentions that by one edict a century 
before Christ, two thousand families were 
transported to the fortified towns of Lydia and 

16 



St. Paul and His Times 

Phrygia, for the sake of hastening submission 
and good order among a rude people. The 
special political privileges granted by the 
Seleucid kings to secure the contentment and 
fidelity of these exiles were confirmed by 
Roman officials. A people instructed in re- 
ligious truth was thus established in the 
midst of heathen communities and in due time 
a specially prepared Apostle was sent forth to 
take advantage of their intelligence and in- 
fluence in disseminating among them the 
principles of the Christian faith. 

At the same time, in many an emergency 
the protection assured by the universal rights 
of Roman citizenship secured to Paul life and 
liberty for prolonged service. At Thessalon- 
ica he was kindly received by the Politarchs ; 
at Corinth he was rescued from the hands of 
infuriated Jews by the justice of Gallio; in 
Jerusalem he was saved from the excited mob 
by the interference of Lysias, the captain of 
the guard ; at Caesarea he was sheltered from 
the plots of the Great Council by Festus, the 
Roman Governor ; and yet again he saved him- 
self from the malignity of the Jews by his 
formal appeal to the right of trial at Rome. 

Paul represents the aggressive side of 
Christianity. Zeal for the kingdom marks 
his whole career, from his divine call to his last 

17 



In The Time of Paul 

impassioned appeal. There were no passive 
hours for one who had taken up the burden of 
the world's redemption. The scope of his 
labors cannot, indeed, be easily understood 
now that Asia Minor and Macedonia are so re- 
mote from the track of modern progress, so 
far apart from all arenas of national strife. It 
is difficult to realize how populous was this 
region at this time. The great highways of 
commerce and travel lay along its coast, 
through cities prosperous in trade, magnifi- 
cent in architecture, the centers of Greek cul- 
ture and influence; or over the mountain 
passes of the interior through fortified towns 
in which order was maintained "by Roman 
magistrates and centurions. Through all of 
these provinces Paul went with the freedom as- 
sured to a citizen of the Empire, and with 
ever deepening comprehension of the exigen- 
cies and opportunities which confronted him. 

The story of Paul's providential call has in 
it a touch of romance. 

One day while waiting at Tarsus in doubt 
as to his future, he suddenly found himself 
face to face with Barnabas, who, years before, 
with an instinctive recognition of his zeal and 
capacity for service, had befriended him at 
Jerusalem. It was on the crowded streets of 
this Cilician city that Paul again encountered 

18 



St. Paul and His Times 

the man who had been praying for a coadjutor in 
his apostolic labors, Barnabas' word of invita- 
tion and appeal was as spark to tinder. The 
voice of this zealous worker was to Paul like 
the voice of God, and forthwith the two 
friends traveled together to Antioch the Syrian 
capital, where for a whole year they labored to- 
gether, and had the joy of seeing vast numbers 
of Gentiles brought into the new covenant. 

Here in the third city in population, wealth, 
and commercial importance in the Roman Em- 
pire it first began to dawn on the Roman mind 
that a religion was making its way which 
could no longer be identified with the ancient 
Jewish faith. "The disciples were called 
Christians first in Antioch," but the inventors 
of this new name little dreamed that a name so 
lightly given, at first perhaps with ribald 
wit, was to penetrate, overmaster and finally 
outlive by uncounted centuries the mighty 
empire whose seat of government was upon 
the seven hills of Rome. 

It is significant that this Gentile city, and 
not Jerusalem, was the starting point for the 
first great world-wide missionary enterprise; 
that here began the work which was to ex- 
tend through every province of the known 
world. By the light of history it is now easy 
to see that the very genius of Christianity as 

19 



In The Time of Paul 

a world-wide religion was in the impulse which 
sent Paul and Barnabas forth from, and 
brought them back to, a city belonging not to 
the Jewish but to the Roman world. It was 
not so far distant from Jerusalem — the earlier 
base of religion, where James presided over the 
first Christian church and where some of the 
twelve still lingered — as to prevent attendance 
at the Great Council which was held for solemn 
consideration of the new and startling enter- 
prise upon which these enthusiastic apostles 
had entered. The new missionary centre of 
Christianity lost nothing from being within a 
few days' journey of the sacred city, while it 
gained much from its relation to the great 
world which the Jew called Gentiledom. It 
was the destiny of the new religion to conquer 
the all-conquering Empire, in order that the 
salvation of the world might be achieved 
through the co-operative agency a people not 
bigoted and shut out from vital touch with 
the nations, but cosmopolitan and in active 
communication with the world on every side 
of its manifold activities. By reason of its 
commerce, and of its avenues of communica- 
tion on sea and land, Antioch was " the Gate 
of the East," while by its political affinities it 
belonged to the Western world. No city 
was so favorably situated with reference to 

20 



St. Paul and His Times 

the prosecution of a missionary enterprise 
which was not to stop short of the Pillars 
of Hercules and the shores of Britain. Here, 
where for several centuries had dwelt the Greek 
kings of Syria, and where at this time resided 
Roman governors and high officials, was born 
the undertaking which the centuries have not 
yet brought to completion. 

The pamphlet written by Paul's companion, 
Luke, under the title of " The Acts of the Apos- 
tles," and the occasional letters of the Apostle 
himself which have survived the vicissitudes of 
the centuries, give sufficient data concerning 
his missionary journeys throughout the Empire, 
and his enforced residence at Rome. It seems 
probable that a favorable termination of the 
first imprisonment gave Paul five years or more 
of continued labors in Asia Minor and Mace- 
donia. This was the universal belief of the 
ancient church, and is supported by fragmen- 
tary utterances of early writers. His disciple 
Clement, afterwards Bishop of Rome, expressly 
asserts that Paul preached the gospel * * in the 
East and the West," and that he instructed 
c < the whole world in righteousness. " Eusebius, 
Chrysostom, and Jerome held it as a matter of 
common knowledge that Paul went into Spain, 
and this in all probability carried him through 
Southern Gaul. When at last his life-purpose 

21 



In The Time of Paul 

had been fulfilled he found a not unwelcome 
release through martyrdom. He had written 
of himself as "Paul the Aged," worn out by- 
unnumbered toils and unrecounted sufferings, 
and more than < < ready to be offered. ' ' It was 
a pathetic and yet not inglorious ending of his 
earthly life. He had tasted the bitterness of 
loneliness, for he wrote to Timothy: "When I 
was first heard in my defense no man stood 
by me, but all forsook me. Nevertheless, the 
Lord stood by me and strengthened my heart." 
With this comfort, ineffable and unfailing, he 
still was able by the very exigencies of his fate- 
ful trials to "proclaim the Glad Tidings," in 
full measure, ' ' so that all the Gentiles might 
hear the Word." Thus "the tribunal of Nero 
faded from his sight and the vista was closed 
by the vision of the judgment seat of Christ." 
The lights and shadows continued to the end, 
and he marched to his martyrdom leading cap- 
tivity captive. In the sight of men it was an 
hour when evil exulted, and when disaster fell 
upon the worthy. But he was not forgotten 
of the Master whom he had served. The angel 
who had appeared to him in the hour of peril 
on the storm-tossed sea, "standing by him" 
in the night, and speaking sweet words of as- 
surance, came again as under the convoy of 
heavenly attendants he joined "the glorious 

22 



St. Paul and His Times 

company of apostles, the goodly fellowship of 
the prophets, the noble army of martyrs," by 
whom he would not be counted among the least 
of the saints of God. 

The times of Paul are to the highest degree 
significant because they gather up the in- 
fluences of Greece and Rome during centuries 
of brilliant development, and at the same time 
cover the period of the decadence of the old 
philosophy and religion. It was the " fulness 
of time" for the culmination of divine plans, 
because never were need and opportunity 
greater than during this critical period. That 
a religion so radically different from any phase 
of thought or mode of worship previously 
known should have secured a hearing and 
gained a footing within the empire must be 
reckoned among the wonders of the world 
How this came about, — the attempt, the hin- 
drances, the helps, the victories, — is not only 
a matter of historical interest, but is a source 
of enlightenment concerning the most essen- 
tial features of Christianity. Peculiar prob- 
lems are being constantly faced by missionary 
enterprises. Now it is the caste system of 
India; now the exclusiveness of China; the 
nationalism of Japan; or the stolid baseness 
of the South-Sea islanders. But at no time 
did so large and complex a problem present 

23 



In The Time of Paul 

itself as in the middle of the first century. It 
was a practical question to be solved upon the 
broadest and deepest principle, and supported 
by grace and power above any standards then 
known to the world. Under the leadership of 
such men as Paul the gigantic enterprise was 
carried through. Christianity, having sprung 
out of Judaism, was transplanted and made to 
flourish alike in the soil of classic and bar- 
barous nations. The new Gospel was pro- 
claimed, the new worship set up, the new 
order of life established, — and no one can com- 
prehend the meaning and worth of the new 
religion who does not mark the conditions 
with which Paul had to deal and the ends 
which he sought to accomplish. We must 
understand the task assumed by Christianity 
in its length, breadth and complexity; the 
hindrances which were encountered; the un- 
avoidable delays and accommodations; the 
adaptations and adjustments which had to be 
made; the many-sided truth which had to be 
presented to men of many minds; and the 
crude beginnings of organizations and insti- 
tutions which had to receive more perfect 
development. For the initiation of this move- 
ment looking towards the evangelization of the 
world Paul was the u chosen vessel" of God. 
He was appointed ' ' to go far hence unto the 

24 



St. Paul and His Times 

Gentiles," as an apostle whose quenchless 
enthusiasm was to suffice for the most arduous 
service and whose appeals were to shake the 
throne of the Caesars. Born during the reign 
of the mighty Augustus, he lived through the 
shameless administrations of Tiberius, Cali- 
gula, and Claudius, suffering martyrdom under 
Nero the fifth emperor and the most depraved. 
His lifetime, therefore, covers the period of 
critical conflict between two opposing civiliza- 
tions. The contest itself belongs to many 
centuries, but during the ministry of the 
apostle the mastery of human thought and 
action passed from Caesar to Christ. When 
Paul died Christianity had proved itself a vital 
force; and to him, more than to any other, 
belongs the supreme honor of successful leader- 
ship in a world-wide enterprise for a true re- 
ligion and a ceaselessly progressive civilization. 



25 



chapter ii. 
The Task Assumed by Christianity 

A RELIGION is to be judged not merely, 
perhaps not primarily, by what it actu- 
ally accomplishes, but by what it aims to do. 
The religions of Greece and Rome attempted 
little of practical moment. The idea of affect- 
ing government, molding society, or even in- 
fluencing public sentiment by religion was as 
remote from the classic mind as from that of the 
mystical worshipers of the East. Mohamme- 
danism began a crusade against an infidel world 
and from the days of the Hegira sought to win 
the support of blindly devoted adherents, 
It has proved itself a mighty force in many 
nations, and has more than once changed the 
history of populous lands; but it has not aimed 
to infuse into society the ideals of gentleness, 
kindness, nobility and spirituality, and has 
not succeeded in a dozen centuries in estab- 
lishing anywhere on the globe a progressive 
civilization. The Hebrew religion produced a 
sacred literature which has not yet been out- 
grown; but with a moral code of superior 

26 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

quality, with a monotheism of exalted type, 
with a history full of promises and pledges of 
divine favor, it never dreamed of becoming an 
aggressive and redemptive force among the 
cations. It was always self -centered. In no 
epoch of Jewish history did the loftiest of 
kings and prophets seek to extend the faith 
or overthrow the idolatrous and abominable 
superstitions of less favored peoples. Even 
when unlooked for opportunities presented 
themselves in Gentile cities like Antioch and 
Corinth for effective propogandism, the repre- 
sentatives of the Jewish religion were content 
to build splendid synagogues under the shadow 
of heathen temples and exult in the exclusive 
privileges of the children of Abraham. Unlike 
all other religions, Christianity had its orign 
in the sublime self-sacrifice of One who came 
into the world on a mission of love ; went about 
doing good ; was lifted up upon a cross that He 
might draw all men unto Himself; and left the 
scene of His labors with words of command 
upon His lips which placed His disciples under 
an unrepealable obligation to evangelize all 
nations in His name. 

* The genius of the new religion was first 
manifested in the matchless kindness of the 
Master and then in the re-embodiment of that 
kindness in His followers. It required some 

27 



In The Time of Paul 

weeks of meditation and prayer in that upper 
room where the Eleven had met the Risen Lord, 
for men who had lived in the narrowness and ex- 
clusiveness of the earlier religion to gain un- 
derstanding, courage, and impulse for so vast 
an enterprise as the conquering of the world 
by the Gospel of salvation. But as leaven 
works in the lump so the Spirit of Christ 
wrought in them. It was only a question of 
time when they should be completely leavened. 

Having once come into vital contact with 
One who lived and died for men they could not 
be long content in the selfish and unproductive 
enjoyment of a saving faith, whose action 
terminated in themselves. 

Some practical outworking of Christianity 
seems quite a matter of course to those who 
have been nurtured in its precepts, and yet 
was it not a most amazing thing that a hand- 
ful of obscure men should have assaulted the 
customs and superstitions of ages with no other 
weapon than the spoken word; that men who 
were so provincial as never to have crossed the 
boundaries of Galilee and Judea should dream 
of invading the great Roman world with a 
message from a crucified peasant? Yet that 
is exactly what Peter and John, and a little 
later Barnabas and Paul, did. The enterprise 
upon which they embarked. (U<J not seem to 

28 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

them desperate, for they had consciously found 
the distinctive truth of Christianity touching the 
grace of God and the salvation of men ; they also 
cherished the pledge of companionship and 
power from the Risen Christ, and longed to 
replace wretchedness and despair with a peace 
and joy which should fill the whole world. 

The divine origin of Christianity, and its fit- 
ness to be the universal religion, are no less 
clearly demonstrated in its boldness and com- 
prehensiveness than in the benevolence of its 
attitude and purpose toward mankind. It as- 
serted its right to dominate the thoughts and 
lives of men, and control human actions with 
an absoluteness which makes the despotism of 
the Caesars seem trivial, and the superstitions 
of the ancients as passing fancies. For all time 
it sought to forbid things that once were ex- 
alted, subdue passions which once were rampant, 
demand services which before were unasked; 
in a word, it sought to bring every thought 
and imagination into captivity to the obedience 
of Christ. It is not conceivable that any 
human mind could have chanced upon so novel 
a scheme, or that any human heart could have 
r dared such impossibilities. It remained for 
the unfolding counsels of God to bring into 
the light a secret hidden from the foundation 
of the world, to- wit, that the Gentiles were fel- 

29 



In The Time of Paul 

low-heirs with the people of Israel, and that 
by the grace and truth of the Gospel the world 
itself was to be rescued from moral ruin, and 
the whole structure of human society rebuilt 
upon the foundation of a pure faith and an 
exalted righteousness. 

How comprehensive was the work upon 
which Christianity entered appears from a 
more detailed study of its stupendous sweep. 
In the first place, it sought to refine and ele- 
vate man; to lift each individual to a higher 
plane of existence and activity. " You hath 
He quickened," wrote Paul in appeal to the 
consciousness of new life and power. Christians 
are "new creatures" in Christ, of whom great 
things might reasonably be expected. All the 
faculties of man were to be aroused and brought 
into full play by the revelations of the Gospel 
and the touch of the Spirit. The mind, heart, 
conscience, and will were all to be regenerated 
by the Divine message. But the scope of 
Christianity was never to be limited by the 
narrow bounds of individual existence. Its 
aim was the re-construction of society, and it 
might almost be said that the individual was 
regarded as a means to that end — the saving 
of the world. The whole composite life of man- 
kind was to be redeemed and exalted. The 
whole order of human life was to be radically 

30 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

changed, the very atmosphere of the world was 
to be purified aud vitalized. 

To begin with, the sentiments which had 
prevailed regarding both God and man were to 
be essentially modified. The frivolity and 
baseness which characterized Athens and Rome 
alike grew out of the prevailing notions as to 
the manner of life which existed among the 
gods of Olympus and the low standards of 
character among men. No inspirations came 
from above and no aspirations from below. 
No need was more imperative than a revelation 
of the actual glory of God and the potential 
glory of man. Here was the splendid oppor- 
tunity to which the Hebrew people had been 
indifferent. Their earliest Scriptures contain 
a sublime portraiture of a holy and majestic 
God, a gracious and compassionate Jehovah, 
but they never attempted to displace the Greek 
and Roman divinities, never thought to drive 
out the gods of the heathen. The apostolic 
preaching, however, began with the funda- 
mental truths that God made the world, that 
He rules in righteousness, that He redeems in 
love that He wants the confidence and obedi- 
ence of men who cry, "Abba, Father" and 
know themselves as sons of God. 

Where other religions had been indifferent or 
easily tolerant Christianity was insistent and 

31 



In The Time of Paul 

exacting. The uncompromising attitude of the 
Apostles excited bitter resentment. Alike by 
their conviction of absolute truth and by their 
demand for reverence they stirred the skepti- 
cal to animosity. Sometimes their heathen 
auditors mocked, as on Mars Hill; sometimes 
they persecuted, as in Iconium and Lystra. 
But no species of opposition prevailed against 
the determination to create new impressions 
concerning the dignity of God and the worth 
of man. Newness of life, a change as deep as 
the human soul and wide as the human race, 
could not come while men laughed at their 
gods and imitated their reputed vices. They 
must be made to feel the reality of the 
holy God who made and fills the universe, His 
nearness to man, His watchfulness and solici- 
tude, His fatherly patience and His helpful 
grace. They must learn to exact of themselves 
purity, sincerity, kindness, spirituality, and 
begin to live together as rational and moral 
beings upon whom rested the highest sanctions 
of religion. New ideas and nobler ideals must 
have currency and insensibly impress upon 
men the nobility and sacredness of life, the 
whole of life with its wide range of thought, 
speech, action and relationships. 

This means that Christianity not only sought 
to introduce a new type of personal character 

32 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

but to bring about new relationships among 
men, and to rebuild the whole fabric of society. 
The vastness of the undertaking is better ap- 
preciated after a study of the social and politi- 
cal conditions of the first century. It is 
always difficult to rescue an individual from 
low ideals and corrupting habits, but to reverse 
the ideas and sentiments of a community, to 
seriously modify the customs, check the tend- 
encies, and transform the spirit of the world is 
an undertaking so delicate, so intricate and so 
complex as to appall the boldest mind. But 
Christianity could not fulfill its mission until it 
had entered with regenerating power into 
every department of the corporate life of man- 
kind, until it had purified and elevated the 
family, society, government ; until it had over- 
come apathy and dullness, pride and preju- 
dice, passion and cruelty; until it had neutral- 
ized the selfishness and worldliness so domi- 
nant and so persistent at every grade of life; 
and until it had so reconciled men to each 
other as to make harmony and mutual help- 
fulness the law of their being. 

This is the idealism of the Gospels and the 
Epistles. This is the standard set by the ex- 
ample and teaching of Christ and by the 
urgent preaching and impassioned letters of 
the Apostles. If carried out to perfection it 

33 



In The Time of Paul 

would have amounted to a social revolution, for 
scarcely any sentiment or enterprise of the 
heathen world, whether classic or barbarian, 
approached the new standard. Whatever was 
unjust or unclean was bound to give way, what- 
ever was of superstition and idolatry was 
bound to yield to new and higher demands. 
All Ephesus was in an uproar because, as their 
opposers admitted, the missionaries of the 
Gospel had turned things upside down in the 
great city as they had done everywhere else in 
Asia. The new evangel which they pro- 
claimed interfered with the profitableness of 
trade in the silver images of the great goddess 
Diana, now hopelessly discredited by apostolic 
preaching. It also took away the cruel gains 
which heartless men were making out of the 
wandering fancies and mystic words of a hap- 
less maid whom Paul afterward brought to a 
sane mind at Philippi. Somewhat later it 
emptied the Roman temples throughout the 
Roman provinces and, as Pliny's letters show, 
turned the stream of industry and trade into 
other channels than those which had been fed 
by the crowds of superstitious pilgrims that 
nocked to the shrines of the gods. 

It was in part because Christianity had this 
high mission that the masterful mind of Paul 
planned for so many campaigns in the great 

34 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

cities of the empire. If the new order of 
social life could be established in populous dis- 
tricts, and could illustrate its advantages in 
great centers like Antioch and Ephesus, Cor- 
inth and Rome, a new standard would be set 
up throughout the Empire. The policy de- 
vised and strictly pursued by the Apostle kept 
him in the midst of the most intense social 
life of his day, not merely because greater 
numbers were thus made accessible to his 
preaching, but also because greatest moral 
gains were made by counteracting the ancient 
tides of selfishness and corruption by the 
wholesome tendencies and kindly impulses 
flowing from the character and doctrines of 
Christ. In every city Paul urged such pre- 
cepts and principles as are found to-day 
scattered through his Apostolic letters. Men 
were called to remember that they shared the 
common life of society and were really mem- 
bers one of another. They were not to in- 
dulge in falsehood and trickery, for that would 
be un neighborly; they were not to steal from 
one another or seek to corrupt another, for 
that would be unbrotherly. They were bound 
by the law of Christ to build each other up in 
all wholesome and desirable ways. Masters 
were to be forbearing and patient, servants 
obedient and faithful; parents were to be 

35 



In The Time of Paul 

watchful for the true nurture of their children, 
and children in turn were to give honor and 
obedience; husbands were to show affection 
and respect, and wives were to regard the 
highest interests of the home; in short every 
relationship by which the members of society 
are held together and work together was to be 
sanctified by the spirit of Christ. Under all 
seeming differences of endowment and functions 
one spirit was to prevail for the sake of the 
peace and harmony, the prosperity and happi- 
dess, of the whole. One was to use his gift of 
prophecy, another his property, another 
his high office, for the good of others. 
All were to show love with sincerity 
and mercy with cheerfulness. In every 
way Christianity was to show itself to 
be not merely a religion, not merely a form 
and mode of worship, but a scheme of life and 
action. It was designed to enter with practi- 
cal precepts and abounding grace the most 
sacred domain of the soul and the most com- 
plex relationship of society. It was to pro- 
mulgate a perfect code of morals and at the 
same time prove itself a social force for the 
regeneration of human life, for the effective 
assertion of the brotherhood of mankind, and 
the realization of the highest social order. 
While inculcating an ideal standard of 

36 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

thought and conduct Christianity accommo- 
dated itself to existing conditions. It was not 
so transcendental as to lose touch with the ac- 
tual life of society. It did not refuse its name 
or its benediction to those who did not fully 
live up to its sublime principles. For instance, 
the invariable exaction is that of the Sermon 
on the Mount, — "Be ye perfect even as your 
Heavenly Father is perfect." One who has a 
lower aim is unworthy to call himself a follower 
of Christ. One who could rest contented while 
faults of character were apparent would miss 
the consciousness of likeness to the Master. 
At the same time there was a patient forbear- 
ing with manifest defects and even open trans- 
gression when men were sincerely striving 
to gain the mastery of self and the world. 
When all of the Twelve forsook their Lord in 
the hour of darkness and panic when the mob 
broke into their retreat in the olive garden 
on the slope of Olivet he had no word of 
rebuke. An hour later their leader was 
denying his friend and master in the palace 
of the High Priest ! Yet the Risen Lord sent 
a special message of love and confidence to 
Peter, and came again and again to the Upper 
Room for tender conference with the Eleven. 
Paul wrote the seventh chapter of his Epistle 
to the Romans in frank exposure of his pitiful 

37 



In The Time of Paul 

struggles against the passions and tendencies 
of the flesh, — but he also penned the eighth 
chapter in which he rejoices that condemnation 
no longer rests upon him, but that he is living 
in the Spirit, and that he has the witness of 
highest authority, namely that of his own con- 
sciousness, to his Sonship with God. 

With the same recognition of the necessarily 
imperfect stages of social life Christianity 
adapted itself to prevailing laws and customs. 
Its ideal never fell by the breadth of a hair 
below absolute reverence to God, loyalty to 
justice, and love toman; and yet from the first 
it bore patiently with the established order of 
things, waiting for the time when its precepts 
would banish cruelty and lust and inaugurate 
the reign of peace and prosperity. Christ 
said, "Render to Caesar the things that are 
Caesar's," that is, the things that are his not 
by the "divine right" of kings, but by the 
order of established government. There was 
never a Caesar who sympathized with the teach- 
ings or accepted the demands of Christ — not 
even Augustus or Marcus Aurelius ; but often, 
as in the case of Tiberius and Nero, they vio- 
lated every instinct of humanity as well as 
every doctrine of pure religion. Yet Christ 
let the injunction stand unqualified — "Render 
to Caesar the things that belong to him. " Paul 

38 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

learned from the teaching of the Master the 
duty of reverence for constituted authority, 
and joined with Peter in urging obedience and 
loyalty to " the powers that be." Some legal- 
ized form of government is a practical neces- 
sity. Nothing is more perilous than anarchy. 
Even heathen magistrates are set for the re- 
pression of crime. They insure the continu- 
ance of society. 

Not that Christianity was never indifferent 
to injustice or tolerant of imperfection. It 
held inviolate the principles of manhood and 
brotherhood. It never abated by a single jot 
or tittle its imperative demand for sincerity, 
fairness, gentleness and kindly service. While, 
therefore, it temporarily accepted the law and 
administration of the Roman Empire it was 
fundamentally at variance with the corrup- 
tions and oppressions incidental to such a 
godless exercise of political power. It was 
not the form of government to which the new 
religion opposed its tenets. The political 
order might be imperial or democratic, the 
headship of the state might be determined 
by heredity or election, but every ruler was 
under obligation to govern in the fear of the 
Lord and in the interest of humanity. Chris- 
tianity was fearless of consequences, while 
unflinchingly maintaining its moral standards. 

39 



In The Time of Paul 

Proclaiming principles of kindness and just- 
ness it went boldly forth to take its chances of 
life in the great heathen world. 

It is important to emphasize the fact that 
that it is the mission of Christianity to cover 
the whole human life with ' ' religious sanc- 
tions." It stands apart from nothing that 
pertains to thought or action. Every depart- 
ment of human existence furnishes a field for 
" applied Christianity." In the words of Paul, 
1 ' Whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of 
God," we have an injunction which is both 
extensive and intensive. There is no hour of 
life when the obligation does not press upon 
men to love God with all their heart, and their 
neighbor as themselves. There is not a pro- 
ject to be cherished nor a fancy indulged in 
which springs from a loveless spirit. There is 
not a relationship in private life nor a function 
in public administration that is beyond the 
law of love and a good conscience. To inter- 
fere as little as possible with the common, 
everyday life of the citizen has been declared 
to be the ideal of government ; but it is the glory 
of Christianity, and its unique distinction, 
that it has to do with every detail of life. It 
assumes the herculean task of controlling all 
the affairs of the world, in the interest of the 
highest manhood and of the perfection of social 

40 



The Task Assumed by Christianity 

life. The king on the throne is not above the 
level of its exactions, the slave is not beneath its 
benison. The solitary wanderer is sought by 
its messengers. The crowded quarters of the 
world's capital are illumined by its truth 
and made tolerable by its grace. 

The demands of the new religion were inex- 
orable, yet it went everywhere on errands of 
mercy and love. Into a dark, spiritless, hope- 
less world it made its way with a message of 
cheer. In contrast with the "fanatical mystic- 
ism" of the oriental religions, the " gloomy 
faith ' of the old Etruscans and Druids, the 
nerveless mythologies of the Greeks, and even 
the bigoted exclusiveness of Judaism, Christ- 
ianity was charged with hope and help for all 
mankind. It had no esoteric doctrines; no 
hidden mysteries which were for the initiated 
few. With open page or voice it proclaimed 
to the multitude the redemption of the world 
and the birthright of all believers. Its life was 
in its message, its power was in the living 
word. 

In the year 70 A. D. Titus declared before a 
Council of War, at the gates of Jerusalem, that 
the temple must be destroyed in order that the 
religion of the Jews and of the Christians, 
which he identified as one, might be the more 
completely extirpated. His first mistake was 

41 



In The Time of Paul 

in supposing that either form of religion was 
detrimental to the interests of mankind, or of 
the Roman state. His second blunder was in 
calculating upon the overthrow of Christianity 
in the destruction of either temple or city. 
The vital elements in this religion are its noble 
truth, its revelation of the righteousness and 
lovingness of God, and of the essential sonship 
of man. The word having once been spoken, 
after the silence of the ages, the echo could 
never be lost. The message having once been 
delivered could never be forgotten. When the 
covenant which the Lord had made with Israel 
was annulled, it was not by way of exclusive- 
ness, but of greater inclusiveness. Then was 
given the wider covenant which would never 
be retracted; — "I have set thee for a light of 
the Gentiles, that thou shouldst be for salva- 
tion unto the uttermost parts of the earth." 



42 



chapter iii. 

The Political Structure of the 
Roman World 

T T is not in the least derogatory to Christ- 
* ianity to say that in its attempt to dominate 
the world it depended upon outward circum- 
stances; yea, upon the rarest possible combina- 
tion of outward circumstances. This may seem 
to make the redemption of mankind rest upon 
fortuitous conditions; it may seem to iden- 
tify its mission with historical happen- 
ings of most unusual and unlooked for 
character; yet that is a universal char- 
acteristic of the divine plan in every realm of 
activity. It appears in every critical event in 
history and in every form of life. Not a plant 
comes to blossom and fruitage without passing 
through a thousand vicissitudes; not a project 
for liberty and prosperity but runs the gaunt- 
let of menacing difficulties and oppositions. 
Moses attempted the release of his countrymen 
from the oppressions of the Egyptian govern- 
ment, but was obliged to save himself by a 
hasty flight and a desert exile of forty years. 

43 



In The Time of Paul 

There was just one weak Pharaoh to be held 
in check while a million bondmen marched to 
freedom through the land of Goshen and across 
the sea. There was just one Persian ruler 
broad enough in sympathy for a captive people, 
and large enough in plans for a far away 
province, to make it possible for men of Judah 
to return and rebuild Jerusalem. 

The " fulness of time" to which Paul al- 
ludes had reference not merely to the intellect- 
ual and moral attitude of the Chosen People 
but also to the conditions prevailing in the 
Gentile world. The hour had at last come 
when Christianity would find events favorable 
to the spread of its doctrines and the organiza- 
tion of its adherents. It would have gone 
down with the Egyptian dynasties, it would 
have been overrun and trampled to fragments 
by the Persian invasion, had it not been up- 
held for centuries by the strong hand of Rome, 
until it had become mightier than the Empire 
itself. It not only found protection, under 
the aegis of Rome, but it came into vital 
touch with all the elements of ancient civiliza- 
tion which had been conserved, and with the 
beginnings of a new civilization which was 
destined to supplant the old. One of the pro- 
foundest and most sympathetic of modern his- 
torians has said that ' < Rome is the bridge 

44 



Political Structure of the Roman World 

which unites while it separates the ancient 
and the modern world." To take advantage of 
the figure, Rome is the bridge on which Christ- 
ianity crossed from the old world to the new — 
albeit, it took four or five centuries in crossing. 
Christianity came into the old world, but it 
belonged to the new. The old world was 
to be made new in very large part by its 
implanted truth and infused energy. From 
the first it had to do with the whole of 
human life, individual and social, religious 
and political. Therefore it was concerned 
with the institutions, laws and customs, 
the arts and letters, of all peoples. Ulhorn 
has said: " The ancient world culminated in 
Rome, and Roman history is the rise of the 
Empire." Yet culminating as it surely did in 
such a natural expansion as the world has 
never seen, it was near to declining. At the 
opportune moment came the uprising of a new 
and saving religion. All that was valuable, 
in fact, all that was salvable in the civilization 
of antiquity was swept within the lines of the 
advancing armies of Rome. There it was 
found by Christianity, and by the time of its 
transference to the fostering care of new and 
independent states abundant opportunities 
had been afforded for the application of the 
principles and forces of the new religion. 

45 



In The Time of Paul 

Melito, one of the early Apologists, empha- 
sizes the fact that that Christianity and the 
Roman Empire were born at the same time, 
with providential adjustment to each other. 
It is a proverb that the significance of histori- 
cal events cannot be adequately appreciated 
by those who are near the field of action; but 
the relations between the religion which pro- 
claimed its mission to redeem the world, and 
the political power which had mastered the 
world, was patent to philosophical observers 
of that very age. Indeed, this relationship 
did not escape the writers of the earliest 
literature of the new religion, though they 
could not have anticipated, of course, the 
illuminating records of the great centuries 
which were to follow. 

Luke wrote as simply as we date our cor- 
respondence: " Now it came to pass in these 
days, there went out a decree from Caesar 
Augustus that all the world should be enrolled " 
— thus locating in current history the year 
when Joseph and Mary went up from Galilee to 
the City of David. It was a matter of interest 
to fix the time of the birth of Jesus Christ, 
but the significant thing about it is that it 
should have been done through its connection 
with political events. 

The birth of Christ is not said to have hap- 

46 



Political Structure of the Koman World 

pened so many years < < since the building of 
Memphis" or the " capture of Babylon," or 
even the " rebuilding of Jerusalem," but in 
the very year in which Augustus issued a 
certain edict. Christianity dated its birth by 
that of the Empire, and now every empire 
dates its documents by the birth of Christ. 

One cannot read the history of Christianity 
apart from that of the Empire, from the reign 
of the young Augustus to the day when the 
senate gave over the government into the 
hands of the Germanic Odoacer. Wherever 
Roman organization had gone there went 
Paul, the wise and masterful leader of the re- 
ligious movement for the conquest of the 
world's conqueror. The relations between 
the two empires, religious and political, were 
those of rivals. On the whole, however, the 
emperors furthered the interests of Christian- 
ity, although not seldom they were bitterly 
hostile. We have, therefore, to recognize the 
combination of unfavorable with favorable in- 
fluences coming out of the tremendous and 
widely extended political sway of the Empire. 
At times its whole force was arrayed in un- 
compromising opposition to Christianity, his- 
tory recording no fewer than ' ' Ten Great 
Persecutions." This was inevitable. In the 
nature of the case a rapacious political power 

47 



In The Time of Paul 

could not tolerate the pretensions, to say noth- 
ing about the actual gains, of the new world- 
religion. It was a comparatively easy matter 
to adopt a new national or tribal deity — a few 
local divinities, more or less, being a matter 
of smallest concern. They were all of the 
same order and could be fused into the com- 
mon life. They might even contribute some- 
thing to the state by deepening the loyalty of 
some new people of the ever widening empire. 
The state would even have taken Christianity 
under its protection and patronage if it would 
only have made a few concessions to the an- 
cient faiths and the supremacy of the govern- 
ment; but that was, of course, impossible. It 
would have been an abrogation of its most dis- 
tinctive claim. Early ignorance regarding 
the unique features of Christianity did secure 
temporary exemption from harsh treatment. 
For some decades it was fortunately classified 
with the prevailing religions. But when 
it began to manifest its absolute and 
exacting monotheism ; when it began to 
reveal its purpose to modify the whole 
life of man ; when, above all, its tre- 
mendous claims began to justify themselves in 
the numbers and the devotion of its adherents, 
then was aroused first the suspicion and later 
on the animosity of the Roman officials. Even 

48 



Political Structure of the Koman World 

during the life of Paul hostilities broke out. 
The great City of Rome was profoundly stirred 
against the new faith, and Nero became the 
first of a long list of persecuting emperors. 

Yet although the new faith came into such 
irrepressible conflict with ancient beliefs, and 
crossed swords with the armed representatives 
of the government, it could not have conceiv- 
ably conquered the world except for the Em- 
pire. It won its way to lasting victories by 
virtue of the aid unwittingly furnished by a 
political power which suddenly changed the 
tolerance of days to the hatred and persecu- 
tion of centuries. For hundreds of years 
Christianity had no successful mission beyond 
the boundaries of the Roman Empire, and to 
this day, save on a continent then undreamed 
of, it has no vigorous and independent 
life except in lands which at the end 
of the first century were under the sub- 
jection of the Roman legions. This fact 
adds significance to the geographical exten- 
sion of Roman authority. The Empire became 
at last unwieldy and fell to pieces by the 
weight of its far-away provinces, but the 
genius for organization and administration, 
for compelling order and unity, was so gigan- 
tic that for a long time it held conquered dis- 
tricts as component parts of the great whole, 

49 



In The Time of Paul 

although widely separated by distance and by 
national characteristics. The Roman eagles 
were known all the way from the Atlantic to 
the Euphrates, a distance of three thousand 
miles, which relatively is far greater than to- 
day is the circuit of the globe. Upon another 
line of measurement the legions marched from 
the African desert and the Cataracts of the 
Nile on the South, to the Danube and Rhine 
on the North, and even to the firths of Scot- 
land, enclosing within their outer lines prob- 
ably not less than a hundred million diverse 
people. Not many familiar names greet one 
who turns to a map setting forth the Empire 
at the time of its greatest extent; but if we 
were to designate the countries as they are 
known to the world at the end of the nine- 
teenth century there would be included nearly 
all the states of modern Europe except Ger- 
many and Russia; all of north Africa, then 
populous and flourishing; all of the Turkish 
Empire, then composed of some of the richest 
and most civilized of Roman colonies; all of 
Armenia and Mesopotamia, from the Caspian 
Sea to the Persian Gulf. 

An immense service was rendered to Christ- 
ianity, as the universal religion of mankind, 
by bringing this congeries of peoples into sub- 
stantial unity. It was, to be sure, first of all 

50 



Political Structure of the Koman World 

an enforced unity, and to the end was more 
formal than real, yet it was sufficient to make 
the impossible possible. Until they were 
cemented together under the Cassars, these 
nations had lived apart, with the utmost in- 
difference to each other's welfare, or more 
frequently in mutual antagonism. But na- 
tions became provinces and were covered by 
the one name which was infinitely more 
powerful than all the independent national 
titles taken together. The parts were articu- 
lated into one body politic. They shared in 
the dignity and good fortune of a single gov- 
ernment. They came to have common ties, 
common interests, common feelings. They 
stood together in all that concerns safety and 
general welfare. There was an exchange of 
garnered treasures, material, social, and in- 
tellectual. The heterogeneous mass of coun- 
tries and peoples became in many essentials 
homogeneous, c ' All the elements of culture 
and all the forces of civilization being com- 
prised in one empire.' 

At any previous time in the world's history 
since the people were scattered from the 
plains of Shinar, Christianity — if it had ex- 
isted — would have been confined within the 
boundaries of a single country, and compelled, 
if it depended then as now on natural laws of 

51 



In The Time of Paul 

development and propagation, to share the 
fate of the country in which it was planted. 
Not even the idea of a universal religion would 
have been then conceivable. It was the es- 
tablishment of the empire that broke down 
narrow national limits and destroyed walls of 
social partition. For the first time an aggres- 
sive policy, with a sustained missionary activ- 
ity, became possible. 

The unity which gave the long looked for 
opportunity was of advantage first of all in 
developing a sentiment of kinship among men. 
In some measurable degree men came to feel a 
sense of brotherhood between different nations. 
Whereas once there had been repulsion now 
there was attraction acting through the com- 
mon bond of pride and advantage in the em- 
pire. Carthagenians and Romans, Greeks 
and Parthians, dwellers on the Euphrates and 
inhabitants on the Nile were at last on friend- 
ly terms. Differences of name and speech, of 
origin and political history, were covered 
over by the larger fact of likeness and part- 
nership in a government of overwhelming 
majesty. And this feeling the more readily 
influenced men because of the universal con- 
dition of peace. For a time the war trumpet 
was silent, swords were beaten into plough- 
shares, and the doors of the Temple of Janus 

52 



Political Structure of the Roman World 

were closed. As one by one the wars of con- 
quest were ended the work of peaceful ad- 
ministration began, and hostile tribes and 
belligerent nations were robbed of even the in- 
centives to strife. By the end of the first 
century Epictetus could write: " Caesar has 
procured for us a profound peace. There are 
neither wars nor battles, nor great robberies, 
nor piracies.' ' 

This favorable exemption from sanguinary 
struggles which would have disturbed com- 
munities and absorbed thought, was followed 
by the helpful administration of Roman juris- 
prudence. We are accustomed to magnify 
the genius of this people for law and order, 
but their proclivity in this direction is not 
mysterious in its origin. The conditions of 
social and political life on the bank of the 
Tiber, in the earliest centuries, were such as to 
necessitate statutory provisions for the es- 
tablishment of harmony. With so many clash- 
ing tribes and rival classes there was no other 
modus vivendi. The very existence of society 
demanded clear definition and rigid enforce- 
ment of rights. Both the idea and the prac- 
tical application of law grew with the growth 
of the city and of the Empire. Within the 
walls which encircled the Seven Hills the con- 
tentions of noble and peasant, of patrician and 

53 



In The Time of Paul 

plebian, which were transmitted from genera- 
tion to generation, compelled the Senate to 
limit privileges or grant them, as the case 
might be. Outside of the walls the smaller 
cities and kingdoms were scheming and fight- 
ing for grants of land, right of trade, and 
prerogatives of government. 

Hence came about in the insensible progress 
of centuries, first municipal regulations, then 
colonial privileges, and after that a provincial 
system of government which covered the earth 
with its protecting mantle. It was a superb 
development of law and order, but its origin 
and development are not mysterious. No 
social or political facts are more easily ac- 
counted for, but they are not for that reason 
any the less significant. 

How great an advantage came to Christian- 
ity from the quietness and security of life even 
in remote provinces is readily seen. The new 
religion did not seek to place itself in author- 
ity as immediately controling men and money 
and directing political affairs, like Mohammed- 
anism, for instance. All it claimed was the 
privilege of undisturbed labor, the opportun- 
ity to preach its truths, to form churches, to 
do its silent, unobtrusive work in the midst 
of society. It was therefore of the greatest 
moment that lawlessness should be repressed 

54 



Political Structure of the Eoman World 

and outbreaks speedily checked. It is not 
difficult to understand how Paul could enjoin 
respect for heathen officers of state. "Put 
them in mind to be in subjection to rulers, to 
authorities, to be obedient ." " Let every soul 
be in subjection to the higher powers; the 
powers that be are ordained of God. For 
rulers are not a terror to the good work, but 
to the evil." In every city and village of the 
Empire were courts and magistrates to ad- 
minister with Roman dignity and authority 
laws of justice in regard to property and life. 
The details of such a widely extended system 
must have been countless, but they were pro- 
vided for in the settled and comprehensive 
policy of Rome. All provinces were alike in 
the eye of the law, in Italy or Spain, in Macedo- 
nia or in Celicia. Some communities were less 
refined and orderly than others, but there were 
magistrates for Paul to appeal to, if he would, 
in the exercise of the right of his Roman 
citizenship, in Lystra and Derbe, as well as in 
Caesarea and Philippi. 

Next in importance to the firm administra- 
tion of law, which must be accounted an abso- 
lute necessity, was the extension of civiliza- 
tion. The special features of Grecian culture 
require more careful consideration than can be 
here accorded them, but the general statement 

55 



In The Time of Paul 

can safely be made that enough of mental 
quickening and social refinement went into the 
provinces along with the armies of occupation 
to greatly facilitate the progress of the Gospel. 
This preparatory work was not altogether de- 
void of noble motive, although no emperor 
adopted such a definite and vigorous policy as 
that of the Apostle to the Gentiles. The 
Roman people were proud of their eminence 
and believed in their mission to civilize 
as well as to govern the world. More or 
less consciously they were instruments of 
righteousness in developing ideas and institu- 
tions among nations which they had lifted 
out of sheer barbarism. Multitudes who would 
otherwise have been too dull or base to give in- 
telligent hearing listened responsively to the 
lofty truths of the Gospel. This was true in the 
provinces of Asia and equally true in western 
Europe. For instance, a half dozen years 
after the beginning of Paul's ministry 
Claudius came back to Rome from the shores 
of Britain, where he had gone to complete the 
conquest which Julius Caesar had begun a 
century before. When Claudius crossed the 
channel the island had no readiness for the 
Gospel. Rude, untrained Britons, to whom 
words of gentleness and appeals for mercy 
would have been as empty sounds, roamed the 

56 



Political Structure of the Roman World 

forests. But the Emperor was a herald of 
better things. He supposed himself to be 
merely annexing another barbarous province, 
but he was, in truth, planting the seeds of 
civilization and opening the way for a more 
benificent reign than that of Imperial Rome. 
The same significant changes were wrought 
on the other side of the British Channel. A 
century before Christ, what has become the 
fair land of " sunny France" was savage in 
every aspect of human existence. The Com- 
mentaries of Caesar not only recount his vic- 
tories over Celtic and Germanic races; they 
also disclose the grade and conditions of life 
along the streams and among the forests of 
Gaul. We are made to see the rude huts rising 
above the river banks, the warriors in savage 
dress with barbarous weapons grouped in scat- 
tered villages, or wandering to and fro in half- 
aimless migrations. We hear the sound of their 
clannish warfare and of their baser orgies. As 
thus we look into the darkness and behold 
brutish instincts and low ideals we wonder 
how a message of peace and righteousness 
could ever reach such minds and influence such 
hearts. But Caesar's work for the Romanizing 
of Gaul bears an intimate relation to Paul's 
work for the christianizing of the land. The 
Apostle followed the General a century later, 

57 



In The Time of Paul 

and the spiritual conquest was the speedier 
and more complete because of the earlier 
victories of arms. 

Another advantage came to Christianity- 
through the provincial system of Rome. Routes 
of communication were opened and guarded 
throughout this vast territory. One rides out 
of the ancient capital to-day over highways 
which were in their perfection under the em- 
perors. One enters the City of Chester, the 
outpost of British occupation, over roadbeds 
which were laid eighteen hundred years ago; 
and adventurous explorers have traced the lines 
of imperial roads over the passes of Phrygian 
mountains. It was a simple necessity of ad- 
ministration in the provinces. Five main 
lines of travel came out of the Imperial City 
and branched in every direction — through 
southern Gaul into Spain; through France to 
the Scottish border; through Milan and over 
the Alps to Cologne and Leyden; through 
Philippi and on to Ephesus and Antioch. A 
traveler could measure his way along a circuit 
of seventeen hundred miles, by Roman mile- 
stones, with Roman maps in hand. Along 
these far-extended routes there was a constant 
stream of travel for military or commercial 
purposes, so that no herald of the Gospel need 
lose his way or be hindered in his journey. 

58 



Political Structure of the Roman World 

Christianity entered Rome before the eager 
Apostle could fulfill his desire to proclaim 
the gospel at the capital of the world. Pil- 
grims and men of commerce were constantly- 
passing from Palestine to Italy, and not a few 
bore with them the message of salvation. 
Some statesmen regarded with disfavor the in- 
flowing tide of immigration from the East, 
complaining that "the Orontes was pouring 
its waters into the Tiber;" but if they had 
been wise and well informed they would have 
rejoiced that men of a new faith could find 
their way to Rome, and that swift and faith- 
ful Messengers could traverse all lands with 
parchments which had been illuminated by the 
hand of one who was a citizen of the Empire 
and a preacher of righteousness. 

Christ delayed His coming until Caesar had 
pushed his conquests from the sea to the great 
rivers, and humbly built His kingdom where 
an earthly potentate had in some sense laid 
the foundation. So heaven has often con- 
descended to be helped by the world. But 
where the earthly king pitiably failed the 
Heavenly King gloriously succeeded. When 
the Empire could do no more for the civiliza- 
tion of the world the Kingdom took up the 
work and carried it on: carried it on more- 
over not only with divine patience but with 

59 



In The Time of Paul 

divine assurance; and it will continue to carry 
it on until the might of Caesar is surpassed 
by the gentleness of Christ. 



60 



chapter iv. 
Social Life of the First Century 

IT was Christianity's mission to remodel the 
* social life of the world, beginning with 
that of the Roman Empire. With this in view 
it entered into existing conditions, and main- 
tained a temperate and flexible adjustment to 
them. Before it was a problem of incalculable 
difficulty, for there was very little in the 
structure of life, either at Rome or in the 
provinces, which corresponded with the ideals 
of a pure religion. In the entire round of 
existence Paul would have searched in vain 
for any occupation or diversion which had 
been influenced by sentiments appropriate to 
Christianity. Neither in private nor in public 
life would he have encountered the motives 
and standards which he represented in his 
own inspiring and devoted life. In the Forum 
he would have found judges, pleaders, spec- 
tators; in the market he would have heard 
the discordant cries of buyers and sellers ; in 
open courts before the temples he would have 
witnessed dancing, dice playing, and all sorts 

61 



In The Time of Paul 

of frivolous amusements ; at the public baths 
he would have listened to idle chatter, gossip, 
jest, and story; at some of the great domestic 
establishments he might learn of protracted 
feasts followed by unspeakable revels, but 
nowhere would he come into contact with 
forms of social life which had been elevated 
and beautified by such ideals as were embod- 
ied in the Gospel 

What could a preacher and advocate of right- 
ousness do in the midst of activities and rela- 
tionships so completely out of accord with the 
standardsupon which he must insist? If he was 
wise he would not demand that individuals 
should step out of the ranks of society, withdraw 
from accustomed engagements, and break all 
ties of kindred and friendship. Christianity 
aimed to do its regenerative work for the cor- 
porate life of mankind as well as for elect indi- 
viduals. Paul followed the policy adopted by 
the Divine Master, who was his pattern and 
leader. Christ began with Peter, Nicodemus, 
the woman of Samaria, and Zacchaeus, undis- 
mayed by their crudeness, accepting them 
as disciples at the earliest stage of develop- 
ment, and even going on to "call" other 
men and women as worldly as these 
had been. In pursuance of the same 
policy he took his place at a feast given by a 

62 



Social Life of the First Century 

retired collector of customs, who had invited 
many publicans to meet him as his friends ; and 
some years later he even asked for hospitality 
at the hands of such an official at Jericho. 
Again and again it is recorded of Christ that 
He was the guest of some Pharisee, whose 
every notion of life and religion was unlike 
His own; and, doubtless, if the centurion had 
shown gratitude for the recovery of his boy 
by a gathering of Roman officers to welcome 
the Miracle Worker, he would have courteously 
met the social demands of the hour. 

Later on in the century, when apostles were 
planting religious truth here and there through- 
out the Empire, it became necessary, in the 
same way, to bear with conditions wholly at 
variance with their standards. An infinite 
number of perplexities arose in every com- 
munity, as the Epistles bear evidence; they 
being largely devoted to practical questions 
which had been referred to the Apostles for set- 
tlement. When Christians could not determine 
what their religion permitted or required, es- 
pecially in churches which were part Gentile 
and part Jewish, in homes half Christian and 
half heathen, and in occupations and ceremonies 
wholly unsanctified, they sent a messenger to 
the Founder of the church to ask how He would 
apply the principles He had preached, and so 

63 



In The' Time of Paul 

help them to readjust their disturbed relation- 
ships. The kind of questions He was asked to 
answer was: Under such and such circum- 
stances what concessions could be safely made; 
under such and such demands by heathen offi- 
cials or un-Christian husbands how much could 
be properly granted? 

To study the social structure of the Empire 
in the first century is to find new ground for 
admiration for a religion bold enough, gentle 
enough, delicate enough to adjust itself to such 
diverse and unfriendly conditions, and yet 
mighty enough to triumph over habit and pas- 
sion, over dullness and perversion, and at last 
modify the long-established order of ancient 
Rome. 

Consideration of the social life of any age 
should begin with the family, for that has al- 
ways been and must ever be the basis of so- 
ciety. Among the Jewish people there had 
resulted from the training of many centuries 
an ideal of home life immeasurably superior to 
that of contemporaneous nations. Both tradi- 
tion and written precept inculcated kindness 
in parents and obedience in children. Very 
much was made of the family life. Every anal- 
ysis of social life came at last to this unit. 
The nation was divided into tribes, the tribes 
into families. In each family the father was 

64 



Social Life of the First Century 

under bonds to give tender care and training 
to his child and the " first command with 
promise" enjoined upon children was the hon- 
oring of father and mother. Wherever a syn- 
agogue was found the Apostles took swift 
advantage of the instruction that had already 
been given in righteousness and kindliness; 
and the infusion of religious sentiments which 
in every community came from Jew to Gentile 
must have greatly facilitated the work of the 
Gospel. Outside of Israel there was properly 
speaking no home life. In the early and vig- 
orous days of Rome marriage had been crowned 
with the highest honor, and for centuries di- 
vorce was unknown. But by the time of 
Augustus the family institution had fallen into 
shameful discredit and the position of women 
— which of itself determines the grade and 
quality of civilization — had become deplorable. 
There is nothing in the teachings of Christ to 
correspond with that Grecian thought con- 
cerning woman and her place in the family 
which was adopted at Rome to its incalculable 
injury. " Plato represents a state as wholly 
disorganized where wives were on an equality 
with their husbands." Aristotle expressly 
characterizes women as " beings of inferior 
kind." 

Family life, in the true meaning of the words, 

65 



In The Time of Paul 

the Greek did not know. He sought happi- 
ness elsewhere than at his own hearth. "Is 
there a human being, " asks Socrates of a friend, 
"with whom you talk less than with your 
wife? " Demosthenes acknowledged that phil- 
osophy had not enriched the home. It could 
not, because it was fundamentally at fault in 
this regard and threw itself directly in the 
path of a religion in which were strict injunc- 
tions for kindness and purity in the closest 
relationships of life. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the 
marriage laws had become utterly powerless, 
and the institution of the family utterly with- 
out value. It had once been both the glory 
and the strength of the nation in the good old 
days when the Roman matron was respected 
for her virtue and cherished for her loveli- 
ness, and the old marriage laws could not 
be repealed nor could the sentiments from 
which they had sprung be entirely uprooted. 
So far as the provinces were concerned, also, 
there was a large remnant of power for social 
purity and good order in the ordinances which 
were enforced among the rudest peoples. 
Those only were recognized as having the 
privileges of Roman citizenship who had been 
born of legitimate marriage; which was an 
immense advance upon the indifferent customs 

66 



Social Life of the First Century 

of orientals and savages. The influence of the 
higher type of civilization and of the constant 
enforcement of law was felt throughout the 
populous regions of Asia Minor as a check 
upon the license which had been prevalent, 
and undoubtedly proved an educating and 
constraining force toward a higher grade of 
social morality. 

The lowest depths were reached in the great 
cities, especially in Rome. The reasons for 
this are not far to seek. All tendencies to 
evil melt together into a mighty current in a 
thoroughly godless city, and in the world's 
capital the stream of lust and worldliness 
swept everything before it, like a swollen 
torrent. The sanction of religion was quite 
absent from the ceremony of marriage, which 
came to be regarded as merely a civil contract, 
easily made and easily dissolved. Very often 
young girls were disposed of, according to the 
whim or the political or financial advantage 
of their parents ; in fact, the Latin has no 
phrase in which a suitor could seek the con- 
sent of a maiden to honorable marriage. It 
was an arrangement between other parties 
than those most concerned, making noble sen- 
timent and generous purpose absolutely for- 
eign to an ill-assorted union, which fre- 
quently brought strangers under a bond which 

67 



In The Time of Paul 

might never be otherwise than distasteful to 
them. 

Marriage took the girl from a life of irksome 
and profitless seclusion, and in a day bestowed 
upon her almost boundless liberty, liberty for 
which she may have longed, but for the proper 
use of which she had not been trained. 
She could for the first times sit at feasts, 
visit freely temple, circus, amphitheater, and 
even the public baths. It is not to be won- 
dered at that distate for marriage grew into 
formidable proportions among men. The 
large majority refused to accept the valueless 
bond, until patriots like Metellus appealed to 
men to marry, not for the blessings of com- 
panionship and a home, but, with better pros- 
pect of cordial hearing, for the sake of the 
state. 

Out of such marriages as these proper home 
life could not issue. Parents had neither love, 
nor the sense of responsibility, toward their 
offspring. The father had absolute right over 
the disposition of his child and was restrained 
neither by law nor by public opinion from neg- 
lect or cruelty. For the most part, in the de- 
generate days of the Empire, children were ac- 
counted a burden, and were frequently dis- 
posed of by exposure. Infanticide became 
frightfully prevalent. In no case were the 

68 



Social Life of the First Century 

children who were allowed to live nourished 
with maternal care, or trained with paternal 
solicitude. At an early age they were sent to 
a slave or f reedman to be taught the rudiment- 
ary principles of reading, writing and arith- 
metic ; thus often being exposed to the most 
demoralizing influences. Later, if their edu- 
cation was to be carried on further they began 
to read standard authors in both Greek and 
Latin ; such as Homer, Virgil and Horace. 
The next stage brought them to a rhetorician 
for discipline in public speaking, which was 
deemed the high road to " success;" the next 
to the lectures of certain philosophers. They 
were also put under the physical training of 
professional athletes. As to moral teachings 
we have conflicting reports. Very often it 
must have found no place in a course deter- 
mined by an ambitious but dissolute parent; 
although high-minded men, like Pliny and 
Quintilian, would doubtless seek to develop re- 
verence for justice, decency and patriotism. 
In rare instances Roman youths completed 
their studies by extensive travels through the 
Empire and by residence at Athens. 

The preaching of Paul evidently dwelt largely 
on the mutual obligations of the home ; for em- 
phatic and repeated commands are to be found 
in all of his Epistles. His words must have 

69 



In The Time of Paul 

sounded strange to most of his auditors and in 
many households must have awakened new af- 
fections and made real the relationships which 
had before only a nominal existence. 

Society was divided into classes which were 
differentiated by marked characteristics. In 
our time, when problems touching the common 
life of humanity excite profound consideration, 
it is pitiful to see the divergencies which in 
every great city rend asunder the mass of pop- 
ulation. So was it in Rome. There was as 
nearly as possible a reversal of ideal condi- 
tions. It was not so much a question of k - so- 
cial order" as of social disorder; not so much 
an enquiry regarding ''general prosperity" 
as the prevalence of universal wretchedness. 
11 The whole structure of pagan civilization 
was really based on a foundation of crushed 
and forgotten humanity." The lower orders 
of society scarcely find mention in the wi'itings 
of the day. "We have at command volumes of 
history, letters, orations and poems referring 
to every phase of existence among the favored 
classes, but there are no pictures from the 
lives of the lowly. We know enough in a gen- 
eral way about the debasement and squalor at 
the bottom of society, among the submerged 
nine-tenths, enough for tears and groans in 
behalf of the hopelessly wretched, but the de- 

70 



Social Life of the First Century 

tails are lost forever. Luxury and pride paint 
themselves vividly, though in a grotesqueness 
of which they are unconscious, but groveling 
poverty does not care to put itself upon can- 
vas. It is only by piecing together scraps of 
information and inferences gathered here and 
there that we are able to reconstruct a social 
condition which becomes more and more re- 
mote from prevailing types of civilization. 

Christianity suffered unavoidably from the 
class distinctions and conflicts of the Empire, 
just as it has been compelled to go halting 
through India, by reason of the caste system. 
It was not only hindered by the greed and lust 
of the rich and by the incapacity and misery 
of the poor, but its precepts of industry and 
manliness were nullified by an unyielding con- 
tempt among every class for all forms of work. 

Labor was not only wanting in honor, it was 
under the ban of public opinion. It was con- 
sidered disgraceful to engage in productive 
enterprises, thus making the existence of a 
sturdy < ' middle - class, " which has always 
proven the reliance of progressive nations, 
absolutely impossible. Even Plato justified 
the contumely which was heaped upon those 
" whose employment would not permit them 
to devote themselves to their friends and the 
state." Aristotle taught no higher wisdom; 

71 



In The Time of Paul 

maintaining that "all forms of labor which re- 
quire physical strength are degrading to a 
freeman," on the ground that "Nature had 
created for such purposes a special class." 
Even the noble minded Cicero is on record as 
asserting that "the mechanic's occupation is 
degrading," because "the work-shop is incom- 
patible with anything exalted." Every word 
and act of the Founder of* Christianity, every 
trait of His character and every impulse of His 
grace, is opposed to such a rating of men and 
to the continuance of social separations. 
Christianity had a message of dignity and 
hope for all; it asked only for honesty and 
earnestness in such pursuits as were possible 
in the ordering of life for each man, but its 
voice was drowned by the clamor of the "priv- 
ileged" and the outcries of the wronged. 

At the summit of society were the nobles, 
of hereditary rank, and the wealthy, of whom 
not a few had climbed from lower levels, from 
the most part by trickery or truckling. But 
in comparison with the multitudes they were 
not numerous. The patricians were never in 
a majority and were not relatively increased 
by the influx of population from every prov- 
ince of the Empire. The very rich depended 
upon enormous grants of land and the unwill- 
ing and poorly requited services of the lower 

72 



Social Life of the First Century 

orders. In Nero's reign half of the province 
of Africa belonged to six great landlords. 
Officials amassed incomputable fortunes — mil- 
lions upon millions of sesterces, but the Senate 
was a limited corporation, and financial mag- 
nates like Pallas and Narcissus are quickly 
enumerated. From the height of the few we 
make a long descent to the next lower strat- 
um of society. The absence of the self-re- 
specting middle class, — independent farmers, 
artisans, traders, — who could feel themselves 
a part of the corporate body, having free and 
satisfying industries, and bearing a share of 
responsibility for the general welfare, precipi- 
tates us to the level of men who could endure 
public disregard and contempt. Even the 
professions, especially medicine, were in the 
hands of freedmen and slaves. Architecture, 
sculpture and painting were considered un- 
worthy occupations for aristocrats. Thus 
through the unreasonable pride and vanity of 
the day, many men of intellectual power and 
artistic genius were barred from wholesome 
and profitable pursuits, which were degraded 
by the hands to which they were relegated. 

Beneath this class of workers, small in 
numbers and esteem, came the uncounted mass 
of men who, in two well defined classes, pau- 
pers and slaves, made up the greater part of 

73 



In The Time of Paul 

the population in the first century. The de- 
pendent poor of the great city may be divided 
into two sections, the majority, who were ab- 
ject in their poverty, and the minority, who 
made some pretension to comfort and respect- 
ability. These were destitute of property and 
were only saved from reliance on the daily 
dole of bread from the hand of the state by 
private benefactions. It was a part of the 
vapid sentiment and senseless display of the 
age that rich men should parade their depend- 
ents before the public, a fashion which proved 
equally ruinous to both parties. The patron 
in lavish magnificence of dress, was accompa- 
nied through the crowded streets by throngs 
of attendants who performed insignificant or 
imaginary services and offered- every conceiv- 
able kind of flattery and attention. There 
was no manly and productive employment for 
such poverty-stricken individuals, and conse- 
quently they lived in a state of miserable, 
degrading parasitism. Even men of respect- 
able origin dragged honorable names down to 
the mire of ignominy, counting it almost a 
boon of fortune to live in pusillanimous de- 
pendence upon the bounty of those men who 
treated them with almost limitless contempt. 
There was, nevertheless, a lower depth of 
infamy and wretchedness for the common herd 

74 



Social Life of the First Century 

of humanity, whose hunger was appeased by 
public largesses of corn, and whose dangerous 
restlessness was held in check by the diver- 
sions and excitements of the amphitheater. 
Rome was crowded with such irresponsible 
people who had flocked thither for the very 
purpose of eating the bread of idleness and 
worthlessness. It has been estimated that the 
Capital contained not fewer than two hundred 
thousand of these wretched and debased crea- 
tures, who made up the mobs which howled at 
the public games and wasted the rest of the 
day in frivolous and demoralizing amusements. 
The distribution of corn to this dangerous 
horde was not in the least prompted by 
charity. It was regarded simply as a measure 
for the safety of the state. This social resi- 
duum was looked upon as a part of the political 
and social constitution of society, and as 
beyond mitigation by any measures or motives 
known to the Roman officials. Even at its 
best the policy of the emperors only tempor- 
ized with the evil which grew apace. Every 
gift and concession tended toward further 
pauperizing and debasement. The multitudes 
fell into more absolute and hopeless destitu- 
tion, and the mobs grew more and more reck- 
less and exorbitant in their clamors for relief 
and favors. The fear increased lest an out- 

75 



In The Time of Paul 

break from this accumulated mass of irrespon- 
sible humanity should overwhelm the lives and 
property of the few who had so much at stake. 

This fear was enhanced by the possibility of 
a slave insurrection; for in the social reckon- 
ing there were tens of thousands who were 
more miserable than the paupers, in that they 
lacked even the semblance of freedom. Beneath 
everv other social level was a mass of slaves, ex- 
ceeding in number the entire remainder of the 
population. These were the chattels of the 
Roman people. They were not even thought 
of as human beings, but they nevertheless 
throbbed with the common life, and imperiled 
society by their degradation and unspeakable 
wretchedness. 

This iniquitous system was not merely en- 
trenched in immemorial custom, but existed, 
irrational and inhuman as it was, by virtue of 
the uniform teachings of philosophers and 
sages. It had the sanction of the highest 
authorities in ethics. The slave was not a 
man. There belonged to him neither free will 
nor claim to justice. Even Plato, " the noblest 
thinker of antiquity," maintained that slavery 
was a natural institution. Aristotle taught 
that the ideal household was provided with 
two sorts of instruments, inanimate and ani- 
mate; slaves without souls and slaves with 

76 



Social Life of the First Century 

souls; but the soul of a slave was regarded as 
imperfect because devoid of will. So mightily 
did such sentiments sway even the best of men 
that Cicero apologizes for the grief he could 
not altogether suppress upon the loss of a slave 
to whom he had become attached. < < Sosithenes 
is dead," he wrote his friend Atticus, "and 
his death has moved me more than the death 
of a slave should" — just as to-day, one might 
be chagrined to be found in tears over the loss 
of a dog pet. The Roman law made care- 
ful distinctions against this hapless portion of 
humanity. The slave was not a person, but 
only a thing, and therefore the absolute prop- 
erty of his master. This, of course, made mar- 
riage an absurdity, and although there was no 
escape from the phrases which indicate human 
relationships the words were declared to have no 
legal meaning. There were "families" of 
slaves, with the "father" or "brother," but 
these terms were as nearly as possible emptied 
of significance when applied to bondsmen. The 
slave market was a chattel market. The vendor 
cried his wares, the buyer examined his goods, 
the purchaser treated his newly acquired 
property according to the whim of the moment. 
During the day slaves worked in chains; at 
night they were huddled in barracks half 
under ground. They were branded, flogged, 

77 



In The Time of Paul 

crucified, according to the pleasure or passion 
of the owner. 

In wealthy households their work might be 
light and the conditions of existence less rigor- 
ous. Indeed, slaves were multiplied, in vulgar 
display of extravagant luxury, until they became 
a burden and embarrassment because no sort of 
employment could be devised for them. Curi- 
ous offices were invented as a relief to the situa- 
tion. There was a "folder-of-clothes;" a " cus- 
todian of Corinthian vases;" a " sandal-boy, " 
whose sole occupation was putting on and remov- 
ing his master's shoes; " letter-carriers," and 
attendants without number. Such slaves made 
up an idle, unwilling, almost unmanageable 
household, under direction of a bead-slave who 
was responsible for their behavior and industry. 
Besides these, there were a few educated slaves: 
secretaries, librarians, and readers, who, on 
the one hand, ministered to the pride and self- 
indulgence of their masters, and on the other, 
scarcely felt the instincts of manhood or 
womanhood. The whole system was hopelessly 
enervating and debasing. 

To study the social structure of the Roman 
Empire is to discover the gigantic task as- 
sumed by Christianity in its unique undertak- 
ing to uplift the entire life of mankind. To 
elevate the consciousness of the individual, to 

78 



Social Life of the First Century 

purify and enoble the home, to adjust the 
various classes of society to harmonious rela- 
tions and wholesome industries, to cover the 
whole existence of man with the sanction of a 
pure and exalted religion, this was the enter- 
prise upon which Christianity went forth into 
the world. It endeavored not merely to bring 
about social order but to infuse something of 
zest and dignity into the occupations of life; 
to make men conscious of better things than 
those which in the round of an idle, luxurious 
life brought only weariness and despair. 

44 On that hard Pagan world disgust 
And secret loathing fell; 
Deep weariness and sated lust 
Made human life a hell. 

In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 

The Roman noble lay: 
He drove abroad, in furious guise, 

Along the Appian way: 

He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 
And crown'd his hair with flowers — 

No easier nor no quicker pass'd 
The impracticable hours. " 

Only the word which Paul as a messenger 
of Him who came to make all things new car- 
ried to Antioch, Ephesus and Rome, a word of 
authority, of inspiration, of hope, a word for 
manliness, kindliness and humanity, could so 

79 



In The Time of Paul 

check the tendencies and remold the social life 
of the age as to save the world from self-dis- 
gust and self-destruction. 



80 



CHAPTER V. 

The Religious Condition of the 

Age 

D ELIGION had in the earlier centuries of 
* ^ Roman life no small influence on the char- 
acter and conduct of the people. The serious- 
ness which characterized the senate was 
determined by a universal and sincere belief 
in the presence and favor of the gods ; and the 
marriage vow gained its sanctity from the 
worship of the Lares and Penates. It has oc- 
curred among most peoples that the early 
stages of religion have been free from formal- 
ism and grossness. Out of the stress of 
primitive life, or out of the genius or inspira- 
tion of select individuals ideas and forms of 
worship have developed rapidly, only to lose 
their vitality in a few centuries. Zoroaster 
undoubtedly contributed enough of moral and 
religious truth — much of which is still pre- 
served in the Zend-Avesta — to reform the 
Iranian people; working in noble fellowship 
with the king, as in a yet more favored land 
Isaiah wrought with Hezekiah, and brought 
the religious life of the Jewish nation to a 

81 



In The Time of Paul 

comparatively high standard. His religious 
system lacked, however, the virility necessary 
to withstand adverse influences; in the course 
of centuries falling away from the monotheism 
and morality which had given it vitality, and 
losing itself in dualism and image worship. 
The people had received gleams of light from 
Ormuzd but the illumination was neither com- 
plete nor constant. 

Scholars who are conversant with the Ve- 
dic Hymns declare that the standard of 
thought concerning the nature of God and 
the spiritual life of man is immeasurably 
above that which appeared among the Hindus 
in later centuries. The religious fervor spent 
its force and degeneracy followed. 

At Rome adverse influences proved too pow- 
erful for a religion which never produced a 
literature to compare in ethical qualities or 
in spirituality with that of Persia or India, 
and which in the time of the Empire had come 
to exert but small influence upon private 
character or public life. It had fallen into 
such decay that no longer w 7 ere men eager to 
build temples, altars, and statues to divinities 
to whom unquestioning worship had once been 
rendered. This degeneracy may have followed 
the influx of wealth and luxury, or it may 
have been the penalty for the despoiling of 

82 



The Eeligious Condition of the Age 

Greece. Undoubtedly the Hellenic type of 
religion had proved destructive of Roman 
simplicity, in respect alike to faith and 
morals. The Greeks had a genius for 
philosophy and art but not for religion or 
morals. They exactly reversed the traits and 
tendencies of the Hebrew people, who scarcely 
commanded the rudiments of philosophy and 
showed no inventiveness in the realm of 
beauty, but were in all periods of their na- 
tional life profoundly alive to the sublime 
truths of religion; while the Greeks mani- 
fested, even in the palmiest days of intellect- 
ual greatness, a strange lack of reverence and 
seriousness. 

Rome incorporated a civilization which was 
in many phases an advance upon her own but 
failed to exclude its fatal tendencies. It was all 
very well to admire the delicate play of fancy, 
so much more free and venturesome than that 
of the more practical Latins; but it was to 
the last degree unwise to exchange a sober 
habit of mind for the frivolousness which had 
prevented the development of manhood 
among the Greeks. If the graceful Grecian 
myths had been built upon a profounder 
sense of the unity and grandeur of the uni- 
verse and of human life, the Romans might 
have adopted and rechristened the personified 

83 



In The Time of Paul 

forces of nature not only without moral deter- 
ioration but with quickened and chastened 
fancy, a process both beautiful and beneficent. 
Their own traditions were heroic, not relig- 
ious or poetical. They might have added re- 
finement to strength if they could have 
assimilated the legends which had grown up 
in Grecian literature to account for the many 
fascinating phases of nature, and at the same 
time have retained their sobriety and viril- 
ity of character and their strong sense of 
right and justice. They might then have 
turned with advantage to look upon Old Nep- 
tune as the god of the sea, upon Ceres as the 
goddess of the harvest, upon Vulcan as the 
god of fire, or upon Venus as the goddess of 
beauty. They needed to become more versa- 
tile and imaginative but they could ill afford 
to barter their stern virtues for all the arts 
and letters, for all the fancies and legends of 
Greece, together with the light-mindedness 
and lax morality which disfigured the Pelopo- 
nesian civilization. The matter-of-fact Latin 
mind weighed down the airy Hellenic fantasies 
with a grossness foreign to the original con- 
ceptions. The genius of administration and 
war which characterized the Romans was of 
a very different order from that which had 
created and peopled Olympus. 

84 



The Eeligious Condition of the Age 

It excites nG wonder to learn that the di- 
vinities were sometimes publicly and bitterly- 
scouted. It has been said that the whole 
Olympian family would to-day reside in A 
penitentiary. Every imaginable crime of lust 
and rapacity had, in the degeneracy and pros- 
titution of fancy, been attributed to the gods; 
not even Jupiter, the father of all the gods 
and the noblest, escaping the imputation of 
jealousy and chicanery. Long before the 
Roman conquest the Grecian code of morals 
had become corrupt, and the common stan- 
dards of life had become subject to vanity and 
passion; thus reproducing the order of things 
exemplified by their deities. Rome absorbed the 
evil with the good, and the decay of her 
own religion was swift and pronounced. 
First of all, it lost its grip upon the 
most intellectual classes, because they were 
the earliest to detect the baseness of mo- 
tive inseparable from current legends, and 
were the most fearless and independent 
in action. Later on it relaxed its hold upon 
the masses. 

The day had passed when Pericles led the 
procession with songs and flowers, up to the 
heights of the Parthenon; and when the gen- 
erals of the republic brought their thank- 
offerings for victory to Capitoline Jupiter. 

85 



In The Time of Paul 

The day of unquestioning reverence and faith 
was irrecoverably gone. 

Here and there devout souls, retaining their 
mystic fervor, came as of yore to the tem- 
ples as sincere petitioners. Some of the 
noblest and purest, like Tacitus and Plutarch, 
refused to yield up their serious belief in the 
gods and renounce their respect for the na- 
tional religion; but the indications are abun- 
dant and convincing that the power custom 
formed the larger factor in the observances of 
the time. The great Caesar made bold to an- 
nounce his scepticism. Lucretius indulged in 
bitter and sarcastic allusions to religion, while 
Pliny coolly assumed that the assured result of 
science was to banish all gods from the uni- 
verse. Cicero said that hardly could an old 
woman be found who trembled at fables about 
the infernal region. Juvenal declared that 
even the boys scoffed at the idea of a world of 
spirits. Cato wondered how one augur could 
meet another without laughing in his face. 
The universal accompaniment of such scepti- 
cism was as usual a childish and tyranizing 
superstition, an absurd and grotesque simul- 
acrum of faith. 

While Caesar presented himself before the 
public as a scoffer at religious beliefs he never 
entered a carriage without uttering a magical 

86 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

formula. Augustus, who at banquets had 
made merry with the gods, dreaded misfortune 
all the day when he had put a shoe on the 
wrong foot. Pliny, a self -proclaimed atheist, 
wore talismans. When a bird of evil omen 
sat on the Temple of Jupiter all the people 
were summoned to make solemn expiation to 
avert disaster from the state. Superstition 
was almost universal, and everywhere potent. 
An earthquake shook the hearts of men, an 
eclipse shut out all the light of heaven, a 
flight of birds brought terror to the stoutest 
souls, and .a serpent crossing his path dis- 
mayed the boldest warrior. 

In the year 37 of the Christian era an earth- 
quake shattered the splendid city of Antioch 
to its foundation. It had boasted of being the 
Athens of the Orient, and justified its claim to 
intellectual distinction by its galaxy of wits, 
philosophers, rhetoricians, poets, and satirists. 
Yet under the terror of that awful hour all the 
citizens became the easy prey of a mountebank 
whose name has been preserved through the 
centuries. He professed to be able to turn 
aside the portentous horrors by talismans of 
the most ludicrous description, and the wisest 
became the unworthy dupes of his magical 
arts. It was a time for necromancers and 
astrologers to reap their harvests. 

,87 



In The Time of Paul 

Nevertheless, something of religion outlived 
both scepticism and superstition, and mani- 
fested itself in punctillious and exacting ob- 
servances. These religious acts were not of 
great moral value; but some lingering of religi- 
ous sentiment, some sense of dependence on 
supermundane powers, some flickerings of 
heavenly light must have sustained a system 
which was subject to open and deserved con- 
tempt. In a way, though not the highest and 
noblest, the state had been founded on relig- 
ion, and even in the degenerate days of the 
Empire men could not utterly ignore the faith 
of their fathers nor suppress their own instinc- 
tive aspirations. Plutarch, in that very cen- 
tury, dared to write: " Sooner may a city 
exist without houses and grounds than a state 
without faith in gods. This is the bond of 
union and the support of all legislation." At 
every important public transaction the gods 
were consulted and sacred rites observed. No 
senator at Rome under Augustus could take 
his place without going to the altar of his diety 
and there offering libations and strewing in- 
cense; and every city and village throughout 
the provinces had special rites for its protect- 
ing divinity. 

In domestic life the religious exactions 
were no less rigorous. Every important event 

88 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

in the family was celebrated with religious 
services. The goddess Lucina watched over 
the birth of a child; Rumina attended its 
nursing; Nudina was invoked when on the 
ninth day the name was given; to Statina was 
consecrated the day on which the child first 
stepped on the ground; while Cunina con- 
stantly averted the evil enchantments which 
threatened its life. 

Rome was excessively punctillious in things 
religious, the perfection of religion being 
thought to consist in exactness of ritual. 
If the substance was gone there was no 
lack of outward forms. On every ship that 
sailed out of the harbor at Ostia stood the 
image of Neptune, and as it passed beyond his 
vision the merchant prayed to Mercury for 
success in all his commercial enterprises. Be- 
fore the harvest a sacrifice was offered to 
Ceres for a bountiful crop. The ancient tem- 
ples still stood in their wonted magnificence 
and were daily visited by multitudes. Feasts 
and sacrifices were celebrated with pomp, and 
altars were the resort of suppliants for divine 
favors. Even emperors performed solemn 
rites in behalf of the city's welfare. What- 
ever may have been the extent and sincerity 
of disbelief among the intelligent classes it 
was still necessary to support popular stand- 

89 



In The Time of Paul 

ing by open adherence to the religion of the 
state. 

Then as now women in greater numbers 
than men gave time to religious observances. 
It may indeed have been largely due to the 
wives and mothers that the customs of worship 
were so long retained in the home. Cicero 
might ridicule some of the stories told about 
the gods, but he nevertheless deemed it a 
desirable thing, a thing to be taken as a mat- 
ter of course, that his wife should cultivate 
piety. Plautus gives an interesting portrait 
of the ideal wife. Among such womanly vir- 
tues as dignity, respect for parents, and obedi- 
ence to the husband, he does not fail to name 
reverence for the gods. What Paul found at 
Athens he might have discovered at Rome or 
Ephesus. The people made a display of re- 
ligion. The paraphernalia of worship was not 
wanting. l ' The old world was full of gods." 
It was said in humorous exaggeration by a 
satirical observer of the age: " Our country 
is so peopled with dieties that it is easier to 
find a god at Athens than a man." Life was 
touched at every point by the forms and rites 
of religion, and if there had been intelligence 
and genuineness the state would have been 
saved from the corruptions which were under- 
mining it; but all the faiths which had been 

90 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

adopted by Rome with such indiscriminate 
haste and lavish hospitality had alike become 
hollow. They were all void of life and power. 
They were all equally impotent. The indi- 
vidual and the state were alike left undefended 
against moral evil, and uninspired to the 
noblest ends of life. 

In the first place they failed to uplift and 
purify daily life. They were external rather 
than internal, formal rather than real, emo- 
tional rather than ethical, being utterly devoid 
of influence upon either reason or conscience. 
They were not constructed upon this basis. 
They made no attempt to be effective in the 
realm of conduct and relationship, they made 
no appeal whatever to the motives or senti- 
ments of the worshiper, they modified in no 
conceivable degree his views of life or his 
methods of securing pleasure or profit. A 
Roman came to the altar with an offering or 
libation hoping thereby to discharge his debt 
to the gods, that they might bear him no 
ill will, or that they might prosper his enter- 
prise. He recognized a certain obligation to 
the divinities as the very word which he used 
for religion implied; but his " religion " did not 
bind him to a Being august in righteousness 
and stern in demands of purity. The gods 
whom he sought to placate were themselves 

91 



In The Time of Paul 

fickle and lustful, and were, by their reputed 
character, the last objects in the universe to 
stimulate men to honesty, highmindedness, 
and self-control. They had been conceived and 
created, by the unsanctified fancies of men, and 
were decidedly materialistic and worldly, even 
although they were assigned to the mystic 
heights of Olympus, above the clouds of 
heaven. 

The Greek found beauty in his religion and 
sought to cultivate in connection with temple 
and image his aesthetic sensibilities, but he 
never dreamed of holiness in connection with 
the Celestial City and the palace of Zeus. A 
solemn procession in which the sacred robe of 
Pallas was carried up the heights of the Acrop- 
olis and within the gates of the Parthenon 
had no imaginable relation to manhood and 
womanhood. The attendants of all ages and 
both sexes pressed forward with oil and cake 
for the sacrifices, but without the slightest 
enthusiasm for righteousness or kindly ser- 
vice. They could not fail to be impressed by 
the majestic proportions of the temple which 
crowned the summit, nor to delight in the 
noble pediment which the genius of Phidias 
had fitly adorned, but they neither saw nor 
heard anything to enhance the solemnity of 
life, or to restrain from frivolity or self-indul- 

92 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

gence. Such psalms as in the days of Peri- 
cles were being sung in Jerusalem were as far 
beyond the comprehension of the cultivated 
Greek as of the nomadic wanderer in the Lyb- 
ian desert. It would have been worth all their 
masterpieces of art to have listened but once 
to a choir of Levites chanting: — 

" Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord? 

And who shall stand in his holy place? 

He that hath clean hands and a pure heart: 

Who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, 

Nor sworn deceitfully," 
or to have found on some scroll the outcry of 
a penitent soul: 

1 ' Search me, O God, and know my heart ; 
try me and know my thoughts; and see if 
there be any wicked way in me, and lead me 
in the way everlasting." 

The religion of the Greeks never produced 
a hymn in praise of truth and chastity, nor 
an inspiration after nobleness and usefulness. 
Much less did the plagiarized Sacred Songs of 
the Romans. Lacking the aesthetic sense of 
the people they had conquered they lost that 
touch of grace and charm which came to 
Athenians with their artistic forms. With 
their own degeneracy they attributed all de- 
grees of cruelty licentiousness to their deities 
until their religion was not only uninspiring 

93 



In The Time of Paul 

but often positively corrupting. More than 
one moralist under the Empire sought to divert 
the people from the dissolute fancies engen- 
dered by current legends of the gods of Rome. 
Seneca cried out in disgust and despair that: 
" All shame on account of sin must be taken 
from men before they could believe in such 
divinities." 

As all the imported religions failed to in- 
spire lives of piety, virtue, and gentleness, so 
they failed to satisfy the instinctive yearnings 
of men for comfort and peace of mind. Men 
are never so imbruted as to become incapable 
of tenderness and aspiration. Certainly, out 
of the thronging millions of the Empire not a 
few souls had voiceless longings for something 
which did not come to them in fierce battle, 
in successful intrigue, in hours of revelry, or 
even in the temple services. Their deeper 
natures were stirred but no fountain of com- 
fort was known to them. If some eager mis- 
sionary from Jerusalem, some far wandering 
minstrel of Judah, had only come to Athens 
with a message and a song then Rome might 
have echoed with hymns of gladness, and 
hearts that were over-burdened and weary 
might have exclaimed, " I will lift up mine eyes 
unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. 
My help cometh from the Lord which made 

94 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

heaven and earth. He will not suffer my foot 
to be moved; he that keepeth me will not 
slumber." It is pitiful to see how they lived 
on in empty pleasure or dumb despair, never 
finding what they most needed. Plato, indeed, 
protests against Atheism as an impossibility, 
because man cannot banish from his heart, 
however brave his words of denial, an in- 
stinctive belief in the gods. But in the gods 
of the Grecian and Roman world, there was 
little to comfort one who blindly reached forth 
his hands toward the host of Olympus! There 
came to greet him no assurances of a personal 
creator and friend, no pledges of watch-care 
and fellowship, no promises of blessedness 
either here r or hereafter. Of this world of 
beauty and sunshine, of passion and pleasure, it 
behooved him to make the most, for beyond it 
lay the regions of Hades, an underworld, dark, 
mysterious, uncanny, where incorporal shades 
wandered aimlessly and hopelessly. Against 
the weariness, disappointment, shame and 
disgust of life Pagan religion set absolutely 
nothing of cheer or comfort. 

As these religions of Rome failed to comfort 
the heart so they failed lamentably to satisfy 
the mind. While there had been a decadence 
of religious fervor and a loss of ethical impulse 
there had been a gain of intelligence. The 

95 



In The Time of Paul 

habit of investigation and of philosophical 
speculation had become more general and con- 
trolling. Consequently, the myths and fables 
which had satisfied the minds of an earlier and 
cruder age and even furnished something of in- 
spiration to character, fell short of the de- 
mands made by a less imaginative but more 
reflective people. Instead of becoming more 
simple the legends of the gods became more com- 
plex and diversified until they broke down by 
the weight of their own accretions. At last 
they were too gross and too conflicting to hold 
even the most credulous. There was, besides, 
an unmistakable drift toward monotheism, due 
not only to intellectual progress, but also to 
the necessities of a moral and religious feeling 
which began to make itself felt in spite of the 
corruption of the time. Jupiter still mingled 
in human affairs and displayed pitiable weak- 
nesses; and yet he, as the father of gods and 
men, kept on flashing the lightning from the 
clouds and governing by his sovereign will. The 
thought of supremacy and unity probably 
gained more in real than apparent influence on 
the thought of the age. It certainly acted 
powerfully on the minds of the thinkers who 
were pioneers for the people in realms of phi- 
losophy. The whole fabric of heathen religion, 
with its myths, auguries, and libations, trem- 

96 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

bled before the scrutiny to which at last it was 
subjected. Once brought into the light of 
rational enquiry its puerilities, absurdities, and 
inconsistencies were manifest. Many a legend 
was puncturedby his torical, study, and many a 
childish story discredited by a closer acquaint- 
ance with the forces and laws of the physical 
world. Even the wisest did not hit upon a 
satisfactory explanation of the origin and 
meaning of life, but they discovered enough 
to make them sceptical concerning the ancient 
faith, and irreverent toward the ancient gods. 

In their relation to Christianity the religious 
experiences of the first century were signifi- 
cant in a twofold way. 

First, they make pathetic and appalling ex- 
hibition of men's need of a religion which should 
hold within it enough truth to meetevery intel- 
lectual demand, enough of tenderness and 
sympathy to satisfy the deepest yearnings of 
the human heart, and enough of moral excel- 
lence to uplift and purify the life of the indi- 
vidual, the family, and the state. Men existed 
for naught and labored to weariness with no 
profit because they were given no ideals of 
manhood, because no appeals were made to 
their better nature. There was a crying need 
of a religion which could address itself to the 
conscience; which could awaken a conscious- 

97 



In The Time of Paul 

ness of the divinity above and within men; 
which could present objects and aims large 
enough and noble enough to make life worth 
living; and stigmatize with infamy the cruel- 
ties, frivolities, and lustful abominations which 
characterized the society of the period. 

There was not only a conscious need but also 
an unconscious readiness for Christianity. 
The preparation was not of the positive sort 
furnished in the sacred writings of the Jews, 
by their sublime portraiture of a just and 
merciful God, by their treasured promises of 
deliverance and ever deepening desire for the 
coming of the Lord's Anointed. The prepar- 
edness came from the exhaustion of all human 
resources and the hopeless discrediting of the 
national divinities, set against the irrepres- 
sible hopes and yearnings of people who could 
not quite suppress the aspirations of heaven- 
made souls. 

Though Rome gave such cordial welcome to 
all national divinities and acquiesced in sacred 
rites of every imaginable form, still she did 
not find the religion for which she waited with 
conscious and unconscious need ; and so the 
processes of scepticism and neglect went 
steadily on. A state of chaos unparalleled in 
history took the place of the old national re- 
ligion out of which in due time a new world 

98 



The Religious Condition of the Age 

was created. The one world-religion of all 
history made its appeal to that which 
is deepest and most ineradicable in man; 
in order that where all other religions 
had hopelessly failed it might find an 
open field for beneficent and triumphant 
work. What the unordained forerunners 
of the Apostle brought to Rome in such 
stories as travellers and merchants could tell 
about the Man of Galilee, Paul finally pro- 
claimed by written and spoken word. Thus 
was introduced into the Capital of the world a 
religion which was fitted to supply the needs 
of the world and at last to accomplish its re- 
generation; a religion in which should be 
manifest more and more the wisdom and power 
of God; a religion which should alike answer 
man's longing for a life of substantial worth 
and dignity and for assurance concerning a 
yet nobler career beyond the tomb ; a religion 
which was to meet with rebuffs, be for a time 
feared and hated as arrogant and exclusive, 
but which nevertheless was to prevail against 
misunderstanding and designing hostility until 
in the end it should be crowned by a Roman 
Emperor as the religion of the State, 



LofC. 99 



chapter v i . 

The Moral Standards of the 
Period 

'"THE difficulties which confronted Christ- 
* ianity in the first century were radically 
different from those encountered by a founder 
of the Mosaic system. Out of their centuries 
of degradation under the Pharaohs a nation 
of bondmen brought dullness of mind and cor- 
ruption of morals, but there was no attempt 
to mold them at once to the divine pattern of 
thought and life. The legislation upon which 
was to be built a new order of social and relig- 
ious life was merely kept in advance of actual 
attainment, and had often to accommodate 
itself to hopeless weaknesses and perversions. 
Christianity was much more than a code of 
laws. Its high office was not to legislate, but 
to instruct and inspire. Its mission was to 
give to the world a standard of thought and 
motive which could never be surpassed or out- 
grown. The amazing thing, therefore, is that 
it was able to gain a footing in so corrupt an 
age and maintain its influence in the face of 

100 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

such base notions and debasing customs as 
those which obtained throughout the Roman 
Empire. 

It was impossible to accomplish more during 
the first century than to organize scattered 
churches, made up of crude and inconsistent 
Christians, and to proclaim principles which 
were left to win their way to favor by their in- 
herent excellence. The glory of the " Apos- 
tolic Age" has dazzled the modern 
church until men look back despairing- 
ly to it as to a golden period for 
the return of which we must hope in 
vain. True it is that the personal devotion of 
Paul and the spirituality of John are still un- 
surpassed, and beyond question the heroism of 
Christian martyrs, even in the earliest centu- 
ries, puts to shame the self-considerateness and 
cowardice which in some degree characterize 
many modern disciples; yet it must not be 
overlooked that the cause of righteousness was 
in desperate straits during the time of Saint 
Paul and that by only the smallest margin it 
won its way against the persistent forces of 
evil which had held sway for generations. 

The doctrines of the Nazarene were too 
novel and too advanced for the majority of 
the Emperor's subjects fully to comprehend 
them at first, much less to accept and exem- 

101 



In The Time of Paul 

plify them. The crudest notions of life and 
the basest customs prevailed, and even within 
the covenant of the church made themselves 
shamefully manifest. The apostolic letters 
are the unwitting memorials of a condition of 
things which no longer survives save in start- 
ling exceptions to the rule of decency and 
correctness of living. Then it was not an un- 
heard of thing for an apostle to reprove a 
church for drunkenness and unseemly strife at 
the holy communion, or to warn against such 
transgressions as blasphemy, perjury and adul- 
tery. That men and women, who had been 
moved by the preaching of the gospel to un- 
dertake lives of godliness, should be guilty of 
such wide departure from the standards of the 
Sermon on the Mount was made possible only 
by long established habit, and by the absence 
of public sentiment against such enormities. 

It is happily difficult, if not impossible, for 
the average Christian to reproduce even in 
imaginatien the order of moral life which char- 
acterized the Roman Empire. Nor need it find 
place even in our fancy save in its general 
features and for the sake of an intelligent ap- 
preciation of the task successfully undertaken 
by our religion. Christianity was indeed as a 
light shining in a dark place. As a candle in 
a deep, dark mine, as a diamond in a muck 

102 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

heap, as a lily among thorns, so was the sweet 
Gospel of Christ in the great world of the 
Caesars ; a message of faith, hope, and love, of 
forgiveness, aspiration, and holy endeavor 
among men of inherited and acquired vicious- 
ness. Farrar has declared that "the epoch 
which witnessed the early growth of Christ- 
ianity was an epoch of which the horror and 
degradation have rarely been equalled and 
never exceeded in the annals of mankind." It 
was a time of sad decadence for a civilization 
which had manifested earlier glories of aspira- 
tion and achievement, and which had created 
two splendid types of national development, 
but which had spent its vital forces and dem- 
onstrated its fatal weakness. 

Uhlhorn holds it incontrovertible that "the 
heathen world was ethically as well as relig- 
iously at the point of dissolution," that "it 
had become as bankrupt in morals as in faith, 
with no power at hand from which a restora- 
tion could proceed." Seneca said of his own 
times, ' < All things are full of iniquity and vice, 
more crimes are committed than can be rem- 
edied by force. A monstrous contest of wick- 
edness is carried on. Daily the lust of sin in- 
creases, daily the sense of shame diminishes." 
Juvenal, Tacitus and Pliny are not less severe 
in characterizing the immoral aspects of the 

103 



In The Time of Paul 

age. Petronius cries out in despair, < 4 Rome 
is like a field outside of a plague-stricken city, 
in which you can see nothing but carcasses and 
the crows which feed upon them." 

There were no redeeming features, no hope- 
ful aspects, among any class, from the meanest 
slave to the monarch on the throne. There 
was nothing to inspire hope in the regenera- 
tion of human society, or respect for life 
itself. Of the four weaklings who assumed the 
reins of government after the death of Augus- 
tus, and who thus in turn became the most 
influential men in society, not a commendatory 
word has ever been spoken. Tiberius was a 
sanguinary tyrant who came to weariness of 
life and self-detestation by reason of senseless 
excesses; Gaius was an unrestrained lunatic; 
Claudius was an " uxorious imbecile," and 
Nero a conceited monster and heartless buf- 
foon — of whom a historian has written that 
he represented ' l the omnipotence of evil in the 
apotheosis of self." The habitual intrigue, 
the acts of murder, the indulgence of out- 
rageous passion which made themselves at home 
in the palace of the Caesars, also domesti- 
icated themselves among the people. For 
once wickedness was suffered to run riot that 
a picture of its grotesque horrors and revolt- 
ing ugliness might be painted for all time, to 

104 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

show "the exceeding sinfulness of sin" and 
the absolute demand for the redemptive work 
of a Power that can make for righteousness. 
When cruelty, lust and treachery have done 
their worst there remains nothing of hope, — 
save in a moral re-birth of the world. 

To analyze the ethical characteristics and 
tendencies of this age is to make profound 
study of a ruinous experiment, which mani- 
fested itself in an attempt to build a great 
civilization upon a basis of unsound morals. 

To begin with, there was everywhere a fatal 
lack of seriousness. Strenuousness of life was 
unknown. The existence of men and women 
was aimless and valueless. Life through- 
out the Empire was of the type which depressed 
the great Apostle when he wandered about the 
streets of the most cultivated city of the an- 
cient world, and which is parenthetically 
described in the words : < < Now all of the 
Athenians and the strangers sojourning there 
had leisure for nothing else than either to tell 
or to hear some new thing. " The most inno- 
cent of all their occupations, and the one which 
commanded their most serious attention, was 
the rehearsal of the latest bit of gossip. In 
contrast with the gravity of the old Roman 
was the trick of levity which had been caught 
from light-minded Greeks. Their art and phi- 

105 



In The Time of Paul 

losophy were meritorious but utterly unpro- 
ductive of earnest living. They could not 
make out the secret of such a man as Paul. He 
was indeed a curiosity at the capital of Achaia. 
They looked into his deeply marked face, 
suffused with sad reflections as he wandered 
under the palms, or made his way among the 
chattering throngs of the market place. 
When he spoke it was with the speech of a 
man charged with a portentous message, but 
they had only listless wonder as to what this 
' 'babbler" would say, for he seemed, indeed, 
to be a " setter forth of strange gods." 

There was no sense of reality in such living. 
It was all a mockery and pretense, and men 
scarcely took themselves seriously. When 
Augustus, who gives his name to this brilliant 
period, came to his death bed he asked a friend 
1 c whether he had fitly gone through the play 
of life," — as if all the world were in very truth 
a stage and all the men and women merely 
players who took the parts assigned them, and 
who at the close begged the applause due to 
those who had finished their roles to the satis- 
faction of idle spectators. Not even into lit- 
erature and oratory could anything of sin- 
cerity and down- Tightness be put by men 
whose temper had been cast in the mold of 
Eoman civilization. Rhetoric and oratory 

106 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

were the fashion of the hour, and they were 
studied not for the sake of gaining power to 
express noble thoughts and enforcing appeals 
for justice, but merely for the employment of 
high sounding words and the use of graceful 
gesture. In all the art of the day there was 
nothing but studied affectation and elaborate 
sophistry. 

The cause of such universal hollowness and 
frivolity is not far to seek. There was an 
utter lack of religious sanction for human life. 
Their gods were as idle and purposeless as the 
people themselves. There came from the 
heights of Olympus no illumination and no voice 
of stern command; and hence even the religious 
philosophy of the time was either powerless or 
perverting. Stoicism had much to say about 
deity but without the faintest hint of person- 
ality. It spoke of the " Reason" of the uni- 
verse and of an c Organizer, " but this shad- 
owy divinity was identified with law and sub- 
stance, and sometimes even with the soul, 
which being in some sense corporeal was at 
death to be re-absorbed into its Creator. Such 
a philosophy can only with the utmost stretch of 
courtesy be called " religion," for it touches 
very lightly the spirit of man and imparts no im- 
pulse to duty or or to manful service. Epicur- 
ianism was yet further from inspiration to 

107 



In The Time of Paul 

nobleness. Atheistic and materialistic, the 
followers of this easy going philosophy scoffed 
at the notions which hinted of a Creator, a 
moral government, or a life for man beyond 
the grave. They looked upon soul as like the 
body, save that it may have been made of 
finer atoms, and they believed that it would 
be dissolved when the visible part fell into de- 
cay. Even its instinctive cries were drowned 
in laughter as the cup went round and boon 
companions took up the refrain : ' ' Let us 
eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." 

After all, man cannot live without some ab- 
sorbing aim, and failing one that is normal 
and worthy he will turn to what may prove 
ignoble and worthless. It is, therefore, not 
surprising that, living for luxury and passion, 
men so far perverted the chief end of existence 
as to devote thought and energy to the pamper- 
ing of the body. They not only became selfish 
and self indulgent, but inventive and enterpris- 
ing in providing new forms of pleasure, and in 
stimulating passion. The Stoic philosophy was 
nominally but not vigorously and effectively 
opposed to such devotion to sensuality. Its 
favorite maxim read, l < Do nothing in excess, " 
but it was never enforced with moral earnest- 
ness, and consequently offered no resistance to 
the tide of evil which swept over the nation. 

108 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

Stoical apathy forbade deep-seated concern 
even for things which concerned the high- 
est welfare. It made too much of the law 
of self-preservation, and of equanimity of 
mind. When philosophers of this school de- 
clared that "the essentia] thing is to live 
according to nature " they condemned ex- 
cesses of all kinds, and without doubt many 
applauded their easy-going theory of life. The 
precepts of Seneca are admirable: " Pray and 
live as if the eye of God were upon you." " Live 
every day as if it were your last." "Live for 
another as you would live for yourself." "Na- 
ture bids me assist men; wherever, therefore, 
there is a man there is room for doing good." 
But the tenor of Stoicism was against intens- 
ity of feeling and discouraged either indigna- 
tion against corruption or zeal for the regen- 
eration of society. 

Luxury was possible only to a small minor- 
ity of the people. Half of the population of 
Rome in the first century were under the bonds 
of slavery while the great mass of free-born in- 
habitants were only in a lesser degree abject, 
being beggars, idlers, parasite^ the objects of 
contempt and the victims of cruelty, without 
hope or aspiration above an existence of squal- 
or, misery and vice. Above these hapless crea- 
tures, so far as outward and wordly conditions 

109 



In The Time of Paul 

are concerned, was an ever diminishing number 
of wealthy and noble citizens. In external 
things the upper class were in striking con- 
trasts with the frightful want and groveling 
habits at the other end of the social scale, 
but in respect to virtue and temperance 
they offered few points of superiority. They 
suffered from ennui and self-disgust; and al- 
though hopelessly weary of such a profitless 
existence they only plunged more deeply 
into sensuality or devised new forms of so- 
called pleasure. They had no higher ideal of 
enjoyment, no other resources of delight. An- 
imalism in more or less refined forms ruled the 
day. Gastronomy took rank as a science, and 
gluttony assumed incredible proportions. Del- 
icacies were imported from every quarter of 
the known world, and banquets, which lasted 
the night through, became the talk of the 
time. 

The public baths at Eome, the impressive 
ruins of which have outlived the centuries, came 
to occupy a prominent place in social life. They 
were not hygenic but delicately sensual. They 
were constructed and frequented for enervat- 
ing luxury, vapid amusement, profitless gos- 
sip. Having no serious demands upon their 
time the wealthy thought it worth their while 
to build these structures of publie resort of 

110 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

splendid proportions, and to decorate them 
with imported marbles and gorgeous mosaics, 
and furnish them with every conceivable device 
for entertainment. Besides making provision 
for air and water baths of many varieties, they 
added gymnasia, lecture halls for poets and 
rhetoricians, libraries, walks, fountains, and 
lounging rooms. These new forms of asthetic 
life which were introduced by Agrippa were 
worthily developed by Nero and his successors 
until they became the most popular institu- 
tions for the leisure class who were over- 
ladened with empty and purposeless hours. 

Devotion to luxury was attended with an in- 
ordinate love of display. The pride of life 
took the direction of rivalry in the exhibition 
of wealth until even philosophers were 
caught by the craze for meaningless and 
useless show of expenditure. In order 
to indulge this passion for display it was 
necessary, of course, to secure money, and 
hence came avarice and rapacity. Men were 
bold and unscrupulous when that served their 
purpose, and obsequious and sycophantic when 
servility promised more than insolence. War 
for plunder and rapine attracted many, while 
dishonest dealing and violence at home scarcely 
excited comment. At the same time every man 
of influence and affluence was attended by 

111 



In The Time of Paul 

suitors and schemers whose self-debasement 
had bottomless depths. By the most con- 
temptible means gigantic fortunes were ac- 
cumulated. Even Seneca, whose words of 
wisdom have been thought to suggest some 
acquaintance with the teachings of the Apostle 
Paul, took advantage of the favor of his pupil 
and master, the Emperor Nero, to amass dur- 
ing four years of unique prosperity, no less a 
property than would be represented by fifteen 
million dollars. Having possessed himself of 
this immense fortune he proceeded, moralist 
and philosopher although he was, first to build 
his house and then to furnish it with objects 
of art of the most costly description. 

The suggestion of Goethe is interesting and 
well sustained, that the Romans never went be- 
yond the condition of parvenus, their luxury 
being nothing but ' ' tasteless extravagance 
and vulgar ostentation. " Even their archi- 
tecture departed from the severe Grecian idea 
of beauty and contented itself with size and 
ornament, as appears in the Colosseum, Had- 
rian's Villa, and the Baths of Caracalla. They 
delighted in the bigness of their structures 
and in decorations of gold, silver and precious 
stones. In the appointments of private houses 
the spirit of rivalry drove each new emperor 
or affluent prince to further excess of ex- 

112 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

penditure. For a while the palace of Lucullus 
was accounted the finest in Rome, but in a few 
years it was surpassed by hundreds of mansions 
which vied with each other in size and splendor. 
The process of enlargement and enrichment 
went on until the summit of extravagance was 
reached in the Golden House of Nero, with its 
decorations of incomparable magnificence, and 
its beautiful setting of parks, woods, pools 
and fountains. The colonades of the house 
itself were a Roman mile in length. Within 
were masterpieces of Greek art; while beneath 
a roof which rested on enormous columns were 
walls which glistened with gold and pearls. 
Not far below it in magnificence was the 
palace of Domitian which hinted of the magic 
touch which belongs to tales of fancy. 
Such lavish expenditure was not confined to 
emperors, nor to the capital, for it covered 
with parks and villas, the Campania, the 
Sabine Hills, even the lake shores of the north. 
In dress and personal adornment the same 
passion for display ran to extremes. Pliny 
tells of a Roman lady arrayed for a betrothal 
feast, itself a hollow mockery, in a gown 
covered with pearls and emeralds, at a 
cost which would have fed and clothed every 
hungry and naked person in the populous city. 
Display became the talisman of success. Ju- 

113 



In The Time of Paul 

venal declared that not even a Cicero could 
earn two pounds at the bar unless he wore a 
conspicuous gold ring; and that to succeed a 
man must be often seen borne through the 
crowded streets on a litter and making sump- 
tuous purchases of rich vases and beautiful 
slaves; that he must also wear brilliant robes 
and flashing jewels, for only then could he 
demand fabulous prices for his services as a 
pleader. 

This parade of riches continued to the tragic 
end, and literally attended a man to his tomb, 
leaving him only when he had visibly left the 
earth. Even at death there was an exhibition 
of ornaments belonging to the deceased, a pro- 
cession of hired mourners, mutes who with 
dishevelled hair made a show of voiceless grief, 
beating their breasts in mockery of a sorrow 
which no one felt. Criers went about the 
streets to announce the death and the hour of 
the funeral. The procession passed through 
the most crowded quarters of the city and 
made itself noisy with varied demonstrations 
of simulated woe. If the deceased had been 
prominent in public affairs the cortege moved 
on to the Forum for the funeral oration, which 
fulsomely celebrated not only his own honors 
and glories but also those of his ancestors. 
The mourning train then passed without the 

114 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

city walls and the grotesque ceremonies were 
concluded at a funeral pyre, where all the 
emblems of a vain show were consumed and 
the body reduced to the ashes which alone 
remained to typify the reality of a life so 
vainly passed and so lightly mourned. 

With this morbid devotion to pleasure went 
an equally abnormal lack of humanity. While 
absorbed in the pursuit of immediate happiness 
men became not only indifferent to the misery 
of others but even found delight in their out- 
cries of terror and pain. The gigantic system 
of slavery with which the state burdened itself 
brought with it in the acutest form a sense of 
the embarrassment of riches. Millions of 
slaves, without citizenship or manhood, with, 
out family or social ties, without self respect 
or self restraint, were a constant source of 
apprehension. Desperate deeds were always 
a possibility and an insurrection which would 
have arrayed the majority — wronged, furious, 
irresponsible — against property and life, was a 
ceaseless dread. Yet the utter lack of intelli- 
gent sympathy and humane consideration sus- 
tained in its worst form an institution mon- 
strous in its denial of every human right and in 
the infliction of hopeless misery. 

Callous to the anguish and despair of fellow 
creatures, whom the precepts of philosophers 

115 



In The Time of Paul 

taught them to treat as chattels, Romans of 
the lordly class corrupted with public exhibition 
of torture and bloodshed not themselves only, 
but the populace whom they despised. Every 
fantastic device was resorted to for the 
excitement of jaded minds, every form of 
fierce and bloody contest was adopted to 
furnish entertainment for blase spectators, 
men, women, and children. Such hardness 
of heart, such dullness of sensibility, al- 
most passes belief, and yet contemporary 
literature abounds in tales which bring to 
modern minds unspeakable horror. The peo- 
ple not only learned to endure the sight of 
blood; they craved it. The menacing cry of 
the rabble which made Augustus and Trajan 
tremble on the throne of so vast an empire 
was, " Bread and Games! " Invention and re- 
sources were put to the stretch to meet this 
wolfish demand for blood It is recorded that 
a single emperor brought to Rome more than 
three thousand wild beasts, and forced into the 
amphitheatre no fewer than eight thousand 
gladiators. When the monotony of ordinary 
scenes of violence made them weary, all possi- 
ble changes having been rung on the fight of 
criminals for life and gladiators for fame and 
money, of human beings with lions and tigers, 
and of stranger beasts with each other, they 

116 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

turned to the ludicrous. A Roman mob must 
be amused at any cost of treasure or decency. 
Fierce, discordant cries passed into the wild 
laughter of buffoonery as men who were blind- 
folded rushed upon each other with the clumsy 
fury of desperation, followed by deformed and 
dwarfed creatures whose misshapen misery en- 
hanced its tasteless pleasure. What mercy 
could live in such an atmosphere ! What sen- 
sibilities could survive such sights and sounds! 
The entire populace was involved in the pas- 
sion for bloodshed, the noblest and wisest 
uttering scarcely a word of protest, even 
Cicero venturing no further than to say: 
c ' Some consider the games cruel, and possibly 
they are as now conducted! " 

Cruelty and lust have always been found in 
ill-omened conjunction, though it would be 
difficult to give a philosophical reason for their 
union. The men who lost the sense of pity 
gained correspondingly in the basest passions, 
so that the evils which dismayed observers of 
that age threatened the overthrow of the whole 
social structure. Lucian wrote with bitter 
sarcasm : " If any one loves wealth and power, 
if any one has wholly surrendered himself to 
pleasures, full tables, carousals and lewdness, 
let him go to Rome." The historian Levy de- 
clared, "Rome has become great by her vir- 

117 



In The Time of Paul 

tues till now, when we can neither bear our 
vices nor their remedies." It was a shameless, 
debauched age, as the relics of indecency on 
the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum report 
with unseemly accuracy. The majority of 
poets and wits, and every theatre of the day 
fed with their unspeakable obscenities an ap- 
petite for baseness which demanded the lowest 
and grossest forms of excitement. Even the 
virtuous and refined Pliny indulged in sala- 
cious epigrams. Martial and Statius, who are 
among the most brilliant representatives of the 
Flavian era, disfigured their writings with vile 
allusions. Nearly all plays were spiced with 
profanity and indelicacies, while sallies against 
the first principles of morality and jests at the 
expense of the gods made the theatres ring 
with coarse laughter. Baseness was in the 
very air poisoning and corrupting each new 
generation of youth. 

This was a sad fall from the stern morality 
of early Rome. The Latins, in their integrity, 
held fast the sentiments of chastity and mod- 
esty, for hundreds of years a divorce being un- 
heard of. The family was maintained with 
love and respect, marriage being held sacred 
and motherhood being regarded as the noblest 
estate conceivable. Even nude images of the 
gods were not tolerated. With Greek culture 

118 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

came luxury and effeminacy until, as Uhlhorn 
has said, " the ancient simple domesticity dis- 
appeared and with it chastity and morality." 
The voluptuousness and groveling baseness of 
life at Rome make a record so dark and tragic 
that one gladly turns down such pages of his- 
tory, hoping to shut out the dismal fact that a 
civilization, once so brilliant, could have fallen 
into such hopeless decay. 

The reason for this widespread social cor- 
ruption is ultimately to be found in the absence 
of any power that could make for righteousness. 
Men were left to fight evil without weapons, to 
maintain virtue without the inspiration of 
noble examples, or the encouragement of divine 
grace. The finer ideals and types of character 
were unknown. It has been said by a modern 
student of the times that Cato the elder pos- 
sessed almost every virtue not specially com- 
mended of Christ, but that there was not one 
of the beatitudes in which he, the best of the 
Romans, could have claimed a part ; and that 
there was not one of the divinities who pos- 
sessed any virtue at all. Epictetus boasted 
that one who is wise c< fears neither man nor 
G-od," and Seneca follows in the same strain, 
saying that "From man not much is to be 
feared; from God, nothing." The spirit of 
reverence did not belong to men who possessed 

119 



In The Time of Paul 

neither a profound respect for virtue, nor an 
exalted sense of deity. 

Christianity found only the ineradicable 
moral nature upon which to build a structure 
of personal character and social righteousness. 
This was apparently a slender base for the 
lordly edifice which belonged to the new scheme 
of life, but it was sufficient. Insincerity, as 
well as baseness, were rife; but the fact that 
men sometimes spoke in behalf of virtue, and 
that men encouraged such utterances, be- 
tokened a moral sense which at the worst was 
only dormant. It may be true of Seneca, as 
Macaulay wrote, that, ' < the business of a 
philosopher was to declaim in praise of poverty 
with two million sterling at usury, to meditate 
epigramatic conceits about the evils of luxury 
in gardens which moved the envy of sovereigns, 
to rant about liberty while fawning on the in- 
solent and pampered freedman of a tyrant, to 
celebrate the divine beauty of virtue with a 
pen which had just before written a defence of 
the murder of a mother by her son." Never- 
theless, the fine sentiments testified to the ex- 
istence of a moral ideal and the possibility of 
real excellence of character, as was abundantly 
exhibited in such men as the slave-philosopher 
Epictetus, and the imperial philosopher Marcus 
Aurelius ; in the incorruptible Fabricius, the 

120 



The Moral Standards of the Period 

high-minded Regulus, the industrious and 
frugal Cincinnatus ; in Virgil, also a poet of deli- 
cate fancies ; and in Cicero, an eloquent pleader 
for public virtue. There remained enough 
of moral understanding to make the task of an 
Apostle not altogether hopeless. The world 
not only needed a gospel of righteousness and 
assurances of divine grace, but it was prepared 
for a message of light given with the urgency 
of an ambassador of Christ. Therefore, Paul 
could write to one Roman colony: "Let your 
conversation be always with grace, seasoned 
with salt," that is, with the salt of refinement 
and delicacy, and to another colony, i ' What- 
soever things are true, whatsoever things are 
honorable, whatsoever things are just, what- 
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are 
lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; 
if there be any virtue, and if there be any 
praise, take account of these things. ' ' 



121 



chapter vii. 

The Intellectual Tendencies of 
the Time. 

A GAINST the dark background of social 
** corruption and the frightful debasement 
of the enslaved and beggared masses gleams 
the light of intelligence. The mind had found 
quickening and expansion. By the intellectual 
development of the age of Pericles and 
Augustus the way had been prepared for the 
story and even for the philosophy of Christ- 
ianity. The Word was not proclaimed to dull 
and groveling savages, wanting in language 
and mental capacity, but had free course to 
run and be glorified in the most perfect speech 
of history. The significance of this fact has 
been demonstrated in our own century by the 
slowness of mission work among barbarous 
people. It required thirty years of devout 
labor to produce the first convert among the 
savage tribes of West Africa; but now, in the 
developed science of the third generation of 
missionaries, the school and the college keep 
pace with the advancing tide of evangelistic 

122 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

work. Ignorance is not the mother of that 
kind of devotion upon which Christianity is 
built. The appeal of Christianity is to reason, 
through the medium of human speech, and its 
doctrines require the finest and noblest modes 
of expression. No literature is loftier, no 
lines of reasoning more subtle than those given 
to the world from the exalted mind of Saint 
Paul. 

The perfection of the Greek language, which 
he employed in his letters to the churches, 
and in which he preached as his native tongue, 
has been conceded by scholars of all lands and 
ages. It was naturally, and yet providen- 
tially, developed by a people who for pure in- 
tellectuality have never been surpassed. It is 
at once the richest and most exact, the most 
flexible and the most delicate the world has 
yet known. Its vocabulary is extensive while 
its grammatical structure admits of the most 
varied and refined methods of expression. 
Like the art and architecture of Greece it was 
not only a part of the evolution of a unique 
people, but it served to perpetuate and trans- 
mit the intellectuality out of which it had 
been developed. The language contained 
much more than can be attributed to the in- 
dependent out-working of Grecian genius. 
No people has ever been entirely isolated. 

123 



In The Time of Paul 

There has never been a hermit nation. At 
least no race has lifted itself out of savagery 
save as it absorbed ideas and inherited institu- 
tions from other sources of civilization. Even 
the Hittites, shut away from contemporary 
kingdoms beyond the Taurus and Phrygian 
ranges, came down to Hamal and touched the 
headwaters of the Euphrates at Carchemish, 
thus acquiring knowledge from the Egyptians 
and the Assyrians, which, in turn, they contrib- 
uted to people with whom they established com- 
mercial relations across the Hellespont. The 
continuity of history has never been more 
clearly exhibited than in the structure of civ- 
ilization which made the Augustan age memor- 
able. 

The language and art of Greece was Rome's 
by right of inheritance, a right fortified by in- 
dependent and vigorous effort to improve 
what had been discovered and absorbed. The 
civilization of Rome was still more complex 
and derivative because the Empire had swept 
its boundaries around all the lands which had 
been directly and indirectly influenced by 
Greek culture, assimilating whatever was 
fitted to advance society and enrich the state. 
The elements which entered into the composite 
order of the first century were exceedingly 
ancient. Not all of them can be traced to 

124 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

their origin, as not every great river can be 
followed to its source among the wooded hills. 
The streams of influence which flowed to- 
gether at last in the common life of the great 
empire took their rise among the Babylonians, 
Egyptians and Phoenicians. From one source 
came the love of magnificence, from another 
the sense of grandeur, from another sugges- 
tions as wide apart as commerce and litera- 
ture. The process began in prehistoric times, 
but its beginnings are forever lost; the accum- 
ulative effects, however, lingered to Paul's 
day, and vitally affected the fortunes of 
Christianity. The Romans had varied culture 
because they learned from the Greeks, while 
the Greeks had become the masters of the 
world in literature, art and philosophy, be- 
cause they had gathered treasures of thought 
and experience from so many lands. 

It was not only a time of vast accumula- 
tions, but also of intellectual activity. It is 
true that the greatest thinkers had long passed 
away. The unsurpassed triad of original and 
progressive philosophers, Socrates, Plato and 
Aristotle, coming in succession as master and 
pupil, had lived their fruitful lives and gone to 
the shades. Homer, the first and greatest of 
epic writers; iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euri- 
pides, masters of Greek tragedy, and Herod- 

125 



In The Time of Paul 

otus, the father of all historians, had long 
before completed their tasks; but Latin 
writers of the first century found their inspir- 
ation in the Greek classics. Athens, in the 
time of the Empire, bore the character of a 
university town to which every Roman of lit- 
erary pretensions made a pilgrimage. Cicero 
delighted in its atmosphere of culture. Ha- 
drian was proud to have embellished it with 
imperial magnificence. This was an age of 
travel, brigandage and piracy having been 
suppressed by the fleets and armies of the Em- 
pire. Men who boasted the rights of Roman 
citizenship went everywhere in safety. All 
who had leisure and money betook themselves 
to classic and historic scenes, quickening and 
broadening their minds by the easy and swift 
adoption of whatever they discovered in the 
kindred civilization of the people whom Rome 
had conquered in the contest of arms, but to 
whom she yielded the palm of victory in the 
contest of ideas. Latins and Greeks were of 
the same Aryan stock, and although each 
branch of the common race had developed un- 
der different environments, yet the likeness 
was deeper than the divergence. Therefore 
the moment they came into contact assimila- 
tion was measurably complete. Out of this 
communication of ideas came a new and worthy 

126 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

literature. To this century belonged such 
poets as Horace, Virgil and Ovid, such satir- 
ists as Juvenal and Lucian, such historians as 
Sallust, Tacitus and Plutarch, such philoso- 
phers as Seneca and Epictetus. It was the 
golden age of the Latins, and even emperors 
became patrons of letters and the arts. 

Greco-Roman civilization was no longer con- 
fined to the two historic peninsulas. It had 
followed the conquests of the phalanx and the 
legion until it had touched all centers of life 
in the known world. Cicero, who was gov- 
ernor of Cilicia fifty years before the time of 
Paul, speaks of the thorough acquaintance 
with Greek among all literary classes. About 
the close of the Apostle's career, Agricola, who 
was to become conqueror of Britain, was re- 
ceiving a Greek education in the city of Mar- 
seilles. In Pamphylia and Galatia there were 
many cities which had been so far Hellenized 
that the gospel could be proclaimed in them 
through the language which had become the 
vehicle of revelation. 

The introduction of social and educational 
influences was Rome's most effective way of 
subduing rustic barbarism and overcoming 
oriental stagnation. This policy originated 
with the great Macedonian whose ambition 
had first carried the language of Greece into 

127 



In The Time of Paul 

the Orient, and of the G-reek kings of Syria 
who, in the breaking up of the Alexandrian em- 
pire, served in turn to spread and deepen the 
new civilization. The special work of the first 
century was the furtherance of an undertaking 
which had been shared in by many generations; 
and which at first had moved from Macedonia 
eastward, and which afterward moved from 
Italy in other directions. In many cities far 
from Rome were not only examples and repro- 
ductions of Grecian art, but schools and libra- 
ries open to the public. Pliny was delighted to 
learn that copies of his works were sold in 
Lyons, while along the banks of the Danube 
and Rhine were manufactories of earthenware 
of the Hellenic type. Everywhere men were 
being educated in ancient and current litera- 
ture; in art and philosophy, in history and 
social science, in agriculture and war. 

This widespread intelligence not only 
opened the way for an apprehension of the 
Gospel but it in turn reacted upon Christianity 
itself, which was seeking to enlighten the world. 
No new disclosures were made and no revision 
of the apostolic message was attempted, but 
independence in interpreting and applying it 
was inevitable; with a certain molding and 
remolding of the institutions of Christianity. 
The processes of religious development have 

128 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

always followed their own law. Christianity- 
has, therefore, been compelled to adjust itself, 
for the time being to established ways of think- 
ing. This was specially true in the first cen- 
tury when its doctrines were acted upon by 
currents of thought and feeling older than 
itself and almost as persistent, and when its 
noblest precepts were being insensibly modi- 
fied by public sentiment. The unfolding of a 
seed depends in part upon the peculiar quality 
of the soil into which it happens to fall. The 
seed of the Word has had variant fortunes in 
the different soils in which it has been planted. 
The hereditary tendencies of the Roman world 
exerted such an influence upon the life and 
the mold of Christianity that after nineteen 
centuries they still shape and control it. 

After a time men learned to philosophize 
about religion and to add the sanction of rea- 
son to that of revelation and command; but 
there was nothing of this in the ancient re- 
ligions, for not one of them addressed itself in 
a formal and undisguised way to reason. The 
Grecian and Roman mythologies were childish 
and their sacred rites superstitious, while the 
Hebrew prophets rested upon the authority of 
a divine mandate. It did not belong to the 
Semitic habit of mind to rationalize. A cer- 
tain limitation was put upon the Founder of 

129 



In The Time of Paul 

Christianity, who could deal with men only as 
He found them. The language of Greece would 
not have been altogether strange to many of 
His hearers, but the language of philosophy 
would have been puzzling, and distracting. The 
men of Judea had not learned to love knowl- 
edge for its own sake, nor had they become 
adepts in following processes by which truth 
is established in the mind. They were not 
much concerned about the principle of things. 
They had never been taught to assign rational 
cases for r natural phenomena, or rational 
grounds for moral precepts. They were in- 
terested in neither the process nor the pro- 
duct of ratiocination. They simply listened 
favorably to that which bore the marks of 
authority or which commended itself immedi- 
ately to their minds. 

There is profound philosophy in the Sermon 
on the Mount, but there is no formal philos- 
ophizing in any of the New Testament deliv- 
erances. It was left for another people to 
bring in this habit of mind and to arrive by 
another pathway at the conclusions which had 
been authoritatively announced by Christ and 
His apostles. No road has been discovered 
leading to sublimer heights than those on 
which the Master always dwelt, but another 
approach has been discovered by which to 

130 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

measure their loftiness and to appreciate 
the outlook from their summit. The 
services of the synagogue, the schools of the 
rabbis, even the teachings of the apostles, had 
failed to develop certain intellectual faculties 
which the finer and broader culture of Greece 
brought into play. With this disciplined 
thought men could go to the foundation of 
ethical system**, could discover the right and 
the significance of man's relations to nature 
and God, and then set forth more clearly and 
persuasively the ideal ends and aims of human 
life. 

Under the stimulus and instruction of Greek 
philosophers, men who had received the word of 
revelation learned to apply reason to the exist- 
ence of the soul. Thus they deepened their 
sense of spiritual realities and intensified 
their longings for the heavenly life. The au- 
thoritative utterance of revelation sufficed for 
a people not given to speculation and reflec- 
tion, but there was unmeasured gain in the 
freedom from the dogmatism concerning him- 
self. The soul asserts itself to unspeakable 
advantage in conscience and consciousness. 
The authenticity of a document may be ques- 
tioned. The prerogative of command may be 
denied, but the independent, autocratic dic- 
tum of the mind concerning its own modes and 

131 



In The Time of Paul 

laws of existence cannot be rejected. It was, 
therefore, no small contribution of Greek 
thought that established two moral existences 
in the universe, God the Creator, and man 
created in his moral likeness. 

It is not to be conceded that the rational 
process was complete apart from the author- 
ity and guidance of revelation. The loftiest 
of philosophers fell short of the New Testa- 
ment standard of thought regarding the capa- 
city and destiny of man, but they traced the 
way to absolute convictions concerning the 
immaterial nature of the soul in contrast with 
the crass and perishable nature of the body. 
Socrates was the pioneer in this splendid field 
of research. He was fascinated by the mys- 
teries and grandeurs revealed within. His 
favorite injunction to his pupils was, "Know 
thyself," an injunction which he was the first 
to obey. The fact of the soul and its possible 
moral improvement were the objects of his un- 
failing interest and speculation. To him all 
material considerations were unpractical. Man 
and whatever relates to man furnished the 
only matters worthy of deep study. Plato 
had the immense advantage of such a forerun- 
ner, and also of the possession of a more 
thoroughly disciplined mind, and consequently 
he came to a profounder knowledge of the 

132 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

soul. He made much of the principle of in- 
telligence, by virtue of which man has kin- 
ship with God, and hence is superior to all 
other forms of creation. 

Connected with this demonstration of the 
soul was the closely allied one which resulted 
in convictions concerning God. Which of 
these two antedated the other and which was 
of greater value cannot be easily determined. 
Contributions were made by successive gener- 
ations of " seekers after God " until at last the 
idea of God was confidently grasped. Out of 
the varied forms and modes of being these 
truth seekers unraveled the enigma presented 
in the apparent contradictions of nature by 
the clearly asserted principle of unity of pur- 
pose. They brought ' ' the phenomena of 
earth and sea and sky under a single ex- 
pression." By the "unconscious alchemy of 
thought " the separate groups of phenomena 
were combined into a whole and conceived of 
as forming a " universe." The search was 
continued until the force which pervades the 
universe was reached. There can be but one 
God, and to Him, by further elaboration 
of thought, they were compelled to at- 
tribute mind and personality, together 
with the prerogatives of moral govern- 
ment. In ordering the vast whole of nature 

133 



In The Time of Paul 

according to immutable law He must be su- 
preme. 

Having no resources of knowledge save un- 
aided reason, their doctrine of Deity was neither 
complete nor free from error. Socrates did 
not deny the existence and activity of gods, 
many, while maintaining that there is one Su- 
preme Being to whom reverence must ever be 
paid. His arguments, like those of the Chris- 
tian Paley, move irresistibly toward a De- 
signer of the universe. Both reasoned from 
the amazing structure of the body whose va- 
rious parts play into each other for a common 
end; both dwelling with special delight on the 
marvelous organ of vision. To indications of 
purpose drawn from various adaptations in na- 
ture, such as birds to the air and fish to the 
sea, he added others which apply to the life 
within. He was wont to ask: " Are you not 
conscious of reason and intelligence? And yet 
do you doubt intelligence elsewhere in the 
great universe! You believe in the unseen 
soul, and do you yet refuse to believe in the 
unseen God? " 

Here again, the profounder mind of Plato, 
building upon the originality and moral ear- 
nestness of his master, advanced to yet higher 
ideas of God as the c < Father and Maker of the 
universe." To him the doctrine of atheism 

134 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

was such an absurdity that he considered it 
possible only to " lost and perverted natures," 
and hence be justified the moral indignation of 
those who had come to a normal belief in 
Deity. Like Socrates he fell into the obsti- 
nate error of the time and marred his theism 
with the inconsistent notion of subordinate 
gods who create in obedience to the mandate 
of the great Designer; but he advanced, never- 
theless, to ideas of God's providental care over 
men, which wrought good results even out of 
poverty, sickness, and misfortune. 

Such notions of God lacked authority and 
fullness but they prepared men's minds for the 
revelations of the Gospel, and so leavened the 
thought of the world as to make a rational 
theism and a living faith more easily attained 
and more firmly held, 

As Greek philosophy applied reason to God 
and the soul, so also did it elucidate the 
grounds of ethical obligation. It raised morals 
to the rank of a science; but not in the sense 
that it made duty more sublime or that it 
added aught to the treasures of the Sermon 
on the Mount. The system of ethics intro- 
duced by the teaching and enforced by the 
example of Christ was not susceptible of im- 
provement. But there was an advantage in 
looking at the same truth from a new view- 

135 



In The Time of Paul 

point, and in approaching it with a new men- 
tal furnishing. 

For the first time, in any land, men were 
given to moralizing, to reasoning out the 
grounds of right, and defining the relations of 
man to nature and God. To this had been 
applied the deepest thinking of the Hellenic 
world, for < ' philosophy was absorbed by 
ethics. " Plato was profoundly concerned with 
this aspect of the truth that man bears the 
image of divine intelligence. He declared that 
each one has two patterns before him, the one 
blessed and divine, the other godless and 
wretched. From the manifested character of 
God he reasoned as to the nature and scope of 
virtue. c ' God is altogether righteous, to be- 
come like him is to become holy, just, and 
wise." He lacked, however, the appreciation 
of love, and missed the virtue of pity; and not 
knowing the doctrine of grace he limited his 
promises of refinement to philosophers ; easily 
excluding, as did his great pupil, Aristotle, the 
unfortunate masses; and yet he pressed on 
toward the goal of righteousness. 

Moral questions gave impulse also to the 
Stoic system of philosophy, which from the 
first took a practical turn, seeking to discover 
the actual laws of life and to bring men into 
harmony with their environment. In its 

136 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

earlier stages it blundered, keeping too close 
to materialism, yet maintaining a certain 
directness of aim which interested and moved 
men. The veriest child of gospel training 
could have helped such philosophers out of 
many of their difficulties ; and yet they were 
grandly striving to discover the secret of 
virtue and the inner principle of light. At 
their highest point they fell far short of per- 
fection and altogether missed the fact of God's 
graciousness, yet they established lines of in- 
vestigation which could be afterward followed 
under the light of Christianity. 

To both Jew and Christian the idea of right 
was identified with holy laws. To the Greek 
mind " divine commands" were not an arbi- 
trary expression of a personal will, but rather 
of nature, of laws which belonged to the very 
constitution of the universe. It was the part 
of man to employ the powers and faculties 
with which he had been endowed for the ap- 
prehension of these laws and for the proper 
adjustment to them of all his activities. As 
he constructed a rational idea of the Creator 
and Moral Governor of the world, so he was 
bound to discover the ethical relationship of 
man. It was evident that the universe was 
fashioned for wise and beneficent ends, for the 
production of beauty and happiness. What, 

137 



In The Time of Paul 

then, is the meaning of the countless miseries 
of mankind? How can these things be fitted 
to an ever deepening belief in divine good- 
ness? Men must be the authors of their own 
misery. They must have wilfully failed to 
seek conformity with the harmonious laws of 
nature. The responsibility for the jarring 
discord is with intelligent and free beings. 

This idea was not born in maturity. It is 
too fundamental and far-reaching to have come 
at once to perfection and dominance. Two 
facts were first established, and then the rela- 
tion between them was formulated. These 
two facts are that man thinks and acts. But 
action must depend upon the " assent of the 
mind;" for mere impulse toward an object 
does not justify possession. There must, there- 
fore, be an exercise of judgment on the basis 
of the laws of nature, then the will comes into 
play, and ought always to accord with the 
highest good of the whole being. The modern 
philosopher expresses no more than this when 
he declares that man has self-determining 
power and that he is under everlasting obliga- 
tion to bring himself into harmony with his 
proper environment. 

This idea of fixedness in nature and freedom 
in man found forcible utterance in the writings 
of Epictetus. "Of all things that are, one 

138 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

part is in our control and the other out of it. 
Out of our control are our bodies, property, 
reputation and office ; in our control are opin- 
ion, impulse to do, effort to obtain and to avoid; 
in a word, our own proper activities." He 
maintained, with his fellow-Stoics, that it not 
only belongs to man to educate his mind and 
train his will, but that it is the pro- 
vince of nature to advance the process 
of discipline. In this way the Stoics 
justified the wisdom and goodness of God 
and encouraged man to the highest 
exercise of virtue. The Christian philoso- 
phers of Alexandria took up this sugges- 
tion with delight, and enriched it with precepts 
from the Gospels, until they had evolved an 
elaborate doctrine of God as "the Teacher, 
Trainer, and Physician of men. ' ' The heathen 
philosophers led the way to the inspiring 
thought that man needs only to gain the prize 
which has been put within his reach. Thus he 
acquires finest qualities of soul, putting pas- 
sion under control of reason, and living in ac- 
cord with the beneficent will of God. The 
path which these thinkers followed brought 
them to sincerity, which lies, indeed, near the 
foundations of Christian character. They did 
not touch such of the Beatitudes as < < Blessed 
are the poor in spirit;" "Blessed are the 

139 



In The Time of Paul 

meetf;" "Blessed are the merciful ; " " Blessed 
are those who hunger for righteousness;" but 
they caught glimpses of that principle oi 
goodness which had been overlooked by the 
formalists of the temple. They discovered 
the ethical quality of secret thoughts and 
cherished impulses. 

Epictetus held that the philosopher's lecture 
room should be a surgery, where men should 
not be entertained by fair words, but where 
they should be aided in the dissection of their 
own characters, in the detection of secret faults 
which could be banished from the soul. He 
followed out a principle which had been 
recognized from the first by the Stoics, who 
laid emphasis upon the inwardness of man's 
real life, and he unfailingly insisted that motive 
counts for more than performance. In the 
time of greatest glory for this system of phi- 
losophy, Epictetus, Seneca and Aurelius urged 
strict examination of one's own character, even 
to minute inspection of words and deeds which 
marked each day of life. 

The chief advantage of such habits of ob- 
servation and reflection was not that Grecian 
standards approached those of Christianity, for 
all the philosophy of the first century was im- 
potent against the social corruption of the age, 
but that the new religion found many minds 

140 



Intellectual Tendencies of the Time 

prepared for its sweet and holy revelations, 
and that it secured a worthy handmaid in the 
reason which had already been trained to noble 
uses. The Greeks, as well as the Hebrews, 
proved themselves "a people of God's own 
possession," set apart to the highest service 
of God and man. In a qualified way, the 
Stoic, as well as the prophet, was a forerunner 
of the Christ; nay, like the Apostle also, he 
came after the gospel to expound and apply 
its revelations and injunctions. While not 
many "wise," while not many who are exalted 
in the conceit of their own knowledge are 
called, yet the appeal of Christianity is always 
to an understanding mind, in behalf of an 
intelligent faith. 

We gratefully recognize, therefore, the 
glorious mission of these two kindred peoples, 
the Greeks and the Latins, to quicken the 
human intellect, to cultivate the imagination, 
to refine the taste, and even to discover the 
rational grounds of faith and character. As 
the Renaissance ushered in a new day for vital 
religion, so in the first century the splendid 
development of the human faculties made pos- 
sible the phenomenally rapid spread of Christ- 
ianity throughout the vast empire of Rome. 
Beyond the bounds of civilization it did not 
attempt to go. Elsewhere in the barbaric 

141 



In The Time of Paul 

world, the seed would have fallen on unpro- 
ductive ground. Under the aegis of Rome the 
greatest herald of the cross found protection, 
and by a light which shined out of Athens he 
led men to the truth which had first been pro- 
claimed in Jerusalem. 



142 



chapter viii. 

The Inevitable Conflict and Vic- 
tory. 

'"THERE have been many crises in the world's 
* history, but it is hardly correct to say 
that in all of them an issue of supreme moment 
was involved. At the battle of Marathon the 
Persian host was turned back from ruthlessly 
despoiling Achaia and destroying the civiliza- 
tion of Greece. Now it would doubtless have 
been an incalculable loss to the world to have 
had the progressive life of Athens checked or 
perhaps even extinguished by Oriental des- 
potism — art, philosophy, civil government 
having been wrought into forms of perfection 
by the genius of the most enterprising and 
original people of ancient times ; yet it would 
be an hyperbole to say that the hope of man- 
kind was staked upon the result of an attack 
made by the Grecian phalanx which on the 
third day of the Persian invasion dared to beat 
against the dense mass of Xerxes' army. The 
world was not saved by Grecian arms, nor has 
it been saved by Grecian culture. 

143 



In The Time of Paul 

On the banks of the Metaurus an army under 
the Consul Nero struck with fury the camp of 
the Carthagenians, and by noontime had won 
a victory of lasting renown. For seventeen 
years Hanibal had maintained himself in Italy, 
ravaging it at will from the snowy Alps to the 
Straits of Messina, and only waited that fate- 
ful spring for the arrival of the allied forces 
which his brother had led through Spain and 
Southern Gaul, to appear before the gates of 
Rome. It would be difficult to estimate the 
loss which would have resulted to the 
world from the substitution of that hard, 
cruel, materialistic, uncommunicative type 
of civilization which had been wrought in 
North Africa, for the radically different type 
which was being developed on the Sabine hills ; 
a civilization not only independent and vig- 
orous, but destined to enlarge itself by the ab- 
sorption of all that was being evolved by the 
kindred race in the Grecian peninsula. Yet 
it would be extravagant to say that the life of 
the world was at issue when in the grey light 
of the morning Hasdrubal's army was routed 
in a desperate encounter that rescued Rome 
from threatened annihilation. The victory 
was important, but not absolutely vital to the 
interests of mankind. 

There have been crises in the history of 

144 



The Inevitable Conflict and Victory 

Christianity when much (but not all) was at 
stake. When Abdurman crossed the Pyrenees 
with a countless horde of followers, fierce and 
ruthless, and after ravaging Southern France 
met Charles Martel near Poitiers in mortal 
combat, Mohammedanism threatened to sup- 
plant Christianity in Central Europe. The 
consequences of such a victory as the Moorish 
chief counted on with easy assurance would 
have been direful in the extreme, but one 
would not be warranted in declaring it a fatal 
blow to the cause of Christian civilization. It 
might have delayed the march of events, but 
not the final development of freedom, intelli- 
gence and pure religion. 

If Luther had yielded at the Diet of Worms, 
as a weaker man might have done, under the 
combined threats of the hierarchy and the 
officials of state, the Reformation would have 
waited a century, and that movement of the 
world toward better things which resulted 
from the co-ordinate advance of commerce, the 
revival of learning, the discovery of printing 
and the rejuvenation of the church, would have 
lacked its most essential feature. No one who 
has in mind the significance of the outcome 
can read the story of Luther's critical hour 
save with bated breath ; and yet there is no 
ground for saying that the cause of pure re- 

145 



In The Time of Paul 

ligion had come to its ultimate contest. Christ- 
ianity might be over-run in particular lands, as 
it was by Islamism in Asia Minor and Egypt 
in the eighth century, or banished from a 
country where promising missions were estab- 
lished as in China in a later century, and yet 
maintain such a vigorous a hold elsewhere as 
to insure its continuance on the earth. 

But the result of the fight which the Apostle 
Paul was making against the allied forces of 
the Empire was absolute and final. It closely 
resembled the issue of his Master's work in the 
narrower field of Palestine. If the Messiah had 
failed to develop in some minds the truth of 
His message, the glory of His personality, the 
spiritual power of His kingdom, His coming 
would have been in vain. If Paul had failed, 
in a ministry much longer and more extended 
than his Master's, to build some enduring 
churches out of Gentile material, the defeat 
would have carried with it appalling conse- 
quences. He was fully accredited as an am- 
bassador of Christ; he had the tongue of fire 
in which to proclaim his divine message ; as a 
Hebrew he could enter the synagogues ; and 
as a Roman he had the freedom of every city 
of the Empire. If he had not been able to 
quicken faith, arouse devotion, inspire hope, 
against a heathen philosphy, a dominant re- 

146 



The Inevitable Conflict and Victory 

ligion and a tide of worldliness, then no man 
could take up the enterprise which had failed 
in his hands. The divine attempt to plant 
spiritual righteousness and a holy faith would 
have come to abysmal disaster. The utmost 
had been done in heaven and on earth. No 
other experiment could hope for success. There 
remained no further sacrifice for sin, no sweeter 
expression of mercy and grace, no more pa- 
thetic and persuasive appeal to a lost world. 
Against the heaviest odds the Apostle must 
win. The issue was absolutely vital. Here 
was the crisis which involves the life of man- 
kind, the veritable redemption of the world. 
When the effort of Paul was crowned with 
success the victory was not for himself 
alone but mainly for the cause to which he had 
devoted his life. The day was won for Chris- 
tianity. It had been demonstrated that it 
could gain and hold the ground against the al- 
lied forces of the heathen world, against su- 
perstition, against a self-sufficient philosophy, 
against evil customs and rampant passions, 
against malignant and persistent prosecution. 
Men and women were to be found in every 
province of the Empire who followed the ex- 
ample of devotion set by the Apostle, suffering 
stripes and imprisonment and ofttimes facing, 
death for the faith of the Gospel. Better still, 

147 



In The Time of Paul 

a new type of individual and social life had 
been produced. Out of the formalities of Juda- 
ism and the grossness of heathenism had been 
gathered many people whom Paul could ad- 
dress as " brethren/' " faithful followers," 
and even " saints in the Lord." Before he 
began his ministry at Rome he was assured 
that the Capital contained some who were 
4 ' beloved of God. " From Asia Minor he wrote 
elaborate letters to "the Church of God" 
which had been gathered under his prolonged 
ministry at Corinth — a most worldly and self- 
absorbed city, containing, nevertheless, a few 
whom he personally knew to be " sanctified in 
Christ Jesus," and to be in loving fellowship 
with other "saints" scattered through "the 
whole of Achaia." Even in Ephesus, where 
the passion for gladiatorial games fell little 
short of that which demoralized the populace 
of Rome, and where the temples were crowded 
by the superstitious worshipers of Diana^ 
there was a reliable company of saints who 
were "faithful in Christ Jesus," and who were 
so thoughtful and intelligent that the Apostle 
could send them a treatise only once surpassed 
in profundity of Christian doctrine. In Mace- 
donia there were two churches of such noble 
faith that Paul was grateful beyonds words for 
every message that reached him concerning 

148 



The Inevitable Conflict and Victory 

their development in the grace of the Gospel. 
One was at Thessalonica, from which city he 
had been driven by an infuriated mob ; where 
men ' ' turned from their idols to serve a living 
and true God," suffering " much affliction " be- 
cause of the " joy of the Holy Ghost," until the 
report of their faith < < to God- ward " filled even 
neighboring provinces. The other church was 
at Philippi, the city to which he had first come 
after crossing the iEgean Sea, and to which 
he sent the most affectionate and glowing of 
all his epistles. 

There was no shadow of doubt in the mind 
of the Apostle concerning the ultimate success 
of the Gospel. When his own labors were 
drawing to an end he wrote to younger men 
who had been consecrated to office in the ad- 
ministration of the church, warning them, in- 
deed, against heresies and worldly tendencies ; 
yet speaking with unshaken confidence of the 
final triumph of Him, who had brought life 
and immortality to light. In fact, he looked 
for a speedy development of the divine plans 
in the glorious coming of the Lord, building 
his exultant expectations, doubtless, upon the 
astounding achievements of truth and grace 
which his own eyes had witnessed. No human 
mind can so explore the future as to read the 
details of unwritten history. Divine illumi- 

149 



In The Time of Paul 

nation and wide experience gave the Apostle 
blessed assurance that the power and wisdom 
of God, as manifested in Christ, were sufficient 
for the redemption of the world, but it was as 
impossible as it was unnecessary for him to 
know how long and complex is the process of 
evolution for the Kingdom of God on earth. 

By the end of the first century the seed of 
truth had been planted in many lands, in fields 
which were to be swept by storms, and crossed 
and re-crossed by contending armies. The Em- 
pire was to be over-run by barbarians and fin- 
ally dismembered. New nations and new types 
of civilization were to arise. The old order of 
things was to be overturned. New modes of 
government, new systems of education, new 
lines of social structure, new and divisive 
methods of thought and worship in the church 
were to succeed each other through successive 
centuries. Through all these changes the 
Gospel which Paul preached was to maintain 
itself with unabated power and unmodified 
grace. As in the first century, it sustained 
itself against ideas, habits, customs and in- 
stitutions which had not only to be resisted 
but actually transformed. The "prince of 
this world" does not readily yield to the 
powers of light. Selfishness and worldliness 
are entrenched in the perversions of human 

150 



The Inevitable Conflict and Victory 

nature. Consequently Christianity can not 
lay down the task assumed when its Founder 
came to earth until the last traces of untruth 
and unkindliness have yielded to the persua- 
sions of heavenly grace. 

But the day dawned. The light deepened 
in the eastern skies. Its radiance gladdened 
the eyes of men who in the time of Paul were 
gathering courage from the earliest victories 
of the Word. Each critical age has added its 
triumphs to the list of glories, and each suc- 
ceeding generation has had larger assurance 
than its predecessor that the time must come 
when all the kingdoms which men have claimed 
as their own, shall belong to Him whose right 
it is to rule, and be but provinces of the world- 
wide Empire of the Living God. 



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